Humanity's Survivors
by Arthur Hansen
Summary: Battlestar Galactica NuBSG and Robotech, cleaned up and all in one location for all current sections. Currently abandoned by myself. The coauthor might pick it up.
1. Chapter 1

Humanity's Survivors

Story by Arthur Hanson and by Raneko.

- - -

Out in the extreme edges of a trianary solar system, a sphere of white light appeared. Then the light vanished. Leaving an island and its surrounding ocean. Instantly the water froze the air froze becoming a white mist slow expanding into space and a massive ship above the island at the mercy of the gravity of it's former tropical home port.

- - -

In front of them the command crew of the SDF-1 watched in horror as the frozen mass of Macross Island rapidly filled the view port.

"Evasive!" Gloval snapped bringing the crew out of their dazed state,

Claudia Grant, quickly worked her controls. "She won't answer the helm sir." She said as she slammed her fist on the useless console.

"We lost power though out the ship," Sammie Porter reported. "We are on auxiliary batteries."

"Sound for Collision," Captain Gloval yelled out, as a klaxon blared though out the ship. "All hands brace for impact!"

The SDF-1 came to a halt after slamming into the remains of Macross Island.

"Damage report, find out what happened," Gloval said with a heavy heart.

"Main power restored," Sammie reported.

"And find out where we are," the Captain demanded.

"I've got it," Lisa said from her station "That is Macross Island out there, but I am not detecting Earth or any recognizable constellations." Lisa Hayes shared a scared look with Claudia.

Sammie interrupted them with, "Captain Dr. Lang reports the fold drive is gone."

That brought all of the activity on the bridge to stand still.

Breaking the silence with, "Begin search rescue and recovery operations immediately," Gloval ordered.

No one said anything as they carried out his orders.

The next few days passed by quickly. The last of the alien battlepods were destroyed and the civilians from the shelters were taken aboard the SDF-1. The RDF technicians had started the grisly process of recovering the Deadelus and the Prometheus carriers, amazingly there were survivors onboard the carriers though anyone not below deck was dead.

On board the SDF-1 no one even noticed the two missing teenagers that were lost in the depths of the mammoth battleship.

"So, Lisa, you said you have some information about where we are?" Captain Gloval asked. He looked around the small conference room.

Lisa nodded. "It has taken Dr. Lang and I all this time figure out where we are. Dr. Lang?"

The strange man that was their chief engineer nodded. "Somehow we were ejected clear out of our solar system. According to what we know about the fold engines, that shouldn't be possible for such a short trip." Lang flicked a switch to turn on the computer screen. "We have managed to deduce our general location in space, but the stars do not match our universe exactly."

"I was informed that no matter where we were in our galaxy, that we would be able to find out our location," Captain Gloval said in a low voice. This was beyond his worst nightmare.

"If it were our own galaxy, that would be true. This appears similar, but scrambled a bit. With that bit of information, I took some exact measurements of the stars and our atomic clocks. This appears to be some sort of alternate reality with minor, but measurable differences."

"What? That isn't possible!" the captain shouted.

"It wasn't possible until we did it. And it is mostly my fault." Dr. Lang stood up to go over to the window that showed outer space. "I made a fatal miscalculation in estimating the safe distance to initiate a fold jump. Not only did the SDF-1s fold bubble extend far beyond the ships hull, it is many time more powerful than I believed."

"What are our options? My God! We have thousands of civilians that we have dragged along with us!" the captain asked.

"Not good. We are at the edge of a solar system and the fold drive appears to be just missing. It isn't our Solar System either." Lisa took a deep breath. "We have detected unusual high power radio frequency transmissions from in system. We had to recalibrate our receivers to even detect them."

"The aliens that attacked us?" Gloval asked as he bristled his mustache.

"I don't think so. We don't have a size reference, but they look human. We've been operating in near radio silence since we detected them. There are thousands of locations, all across the system. So they are space-faring."

"We shall have to initiate contact with them if we wish to have any chance to return to our home. Dr. Lang assures me that we do not have the ability to replace our lost fold drives. Dr. Lang?"

Lang had sat back down at the table. He played with his collar while answering. "Not in the time we have. We scavenged everything we could from Macross Island itself, but we were never supposed to be in a position where we did not have the resources of Earth for repairs. And without our fold engines, we have no possibility to return home."

And there is no way we can retreat out of their system either. "Very well. Lisa, I want you to set up an S.O.S. using their frequencies at the highest output level we can manage."

"Aye sir."

- - -

Commander Cain walked into the bridge of his Battlestar, the Pegasus. BSG-109 was its specific designation. "Commander! We've got order from command to investigate an unusual signal out near the Oort Cloud. They can't make heads or tails of it. It appears to some sort of simple repeating code."

"Thank you, Major Druum. Do we have coordinates for a jump?"

"Yes, sir. I've got it plugged in and the computers should be ready to process it shortly."

Cain grimaced at that. Adama might have a point about these new Battlestars. The computer systems were too integrated. Something, that would never have been allowed back during the war. Thinking about Adama reminded him about his old ship that was going to be decommissioned in just a few weeks. "Prepare to launch fighters when we arrive. Engage the FTL clock with a one minute count."

The commander walked over to the main tracking station, letting the droning voices of his CIC slide past him.

"-Four, Three, Two, One! JUMP!" With the navigator's command, the Pegasus jumped into space near an uncharted asteroid.

"I have a large unknown contact at mark two four, distance is fifty kilometers!" the soldier at the radar station yelled.

Cain's blood ran cold. The Cylons? "What is it?"

"It doesn't match anything we have. It does not appear to be a Basestar. It's pretty odd looking. They look like they might even be making repairs."

"I want our Vipers to enclose the area but they are not to advance towards the unknown ship. Open a channel," Commander Cain ordered.

The voice that replied made no sense at all. What was this idiocy!

- - -

Captain Gloval sighed as he sat down into his command chair. It had been a rough few weeks. Figuring out the 'Colonial's' language and then negotiating for the needed repairs so that he could attempt to get him and his people home.

The help came in the form of two Colonial fleet tenders.

But the refugees from Macross were settled into their temporary housing. Even those two kids that had been lost in the SDF-1s superstructure. And the replacement fold engines would soon be emplaced. The Colonial government had been happy to help for the price of looking around on the SDF-1. Something that he would have avoided, if possible.

Dr. Lang now had a much better idea of how the fold engines actually worked. And more importantly, how they were supposed to work and how to operate them safely. Retracing their path still seemed to be something only remotely possible, but it no longer seemed totally impossible.

Dr. Grentwe seemed quite pleased about some of the new possibilities in dimensional theory this whole fiasco had uncovered. The Colonial scientist seemed ecstatic and not the least bit military-minded, to Gloval's own mind.

Lisa Hayes turned towards the captain from her station. "Sir? I am getting a radio transmission from Pycon."

"Oh? What did it translate to?" the captain asked.

"Cylon attack on all twelve colonies. Then it starts to list all lost Battlestars. Dozens of ships, Sir!" Lisa adjusted her headsets. "It seems the Cylons are... just turning off the Colonial battleships and fighters."

"Battlestar Pegasus is launching fighters. Sir! I'm detecting a single ship at long range," Sammy suddenly shouted.

"Sound Battle Stations!" Captain Gloval shouted.

Deep in space, the Cylon Raider swooped like a bird of prey towards the Battlestar in front of it as it appeared in a flash of red. A glowing light appeared on its 'face', to devastating effect.

Mark VII Vipers just shut down, only moments after they launched. They coasted in zero-gravity, helpless. Behind them, the Pegasus seemed to list as it lost control of its maneuvering thrusters after only barely turning them on.

The Cylon launched four missiles. That should be enough to handle the humans it was sent to kill.

"Those are nukes!" Lisa shouted. "All gunners portside, shoot down those missiles and get that fighter! Launch all Valkyries!"

The SDF-1 suddenly lit up like a firework as railguns and missiles belched forth. The Cylon Raider noted the unaffected enemy ship of unusual design. It jumped out just before the first missiles could get to it, but long enough to see that its own missiles were blasted out of existence.

It had been thwarted. For now.

"Commander Folker! We are going to need to assist the Pegasus in recovering their fighters. You are authorized to reveal Battleoid Mode," the captain said. "Get me Dr. Lang! We need to get the SDF-1 buttoned up as quickly as possible."

"Aye, aye! You heard the old man! Switch to Battleoid and let's get these ships back home!" Roy Folker said over the radio.

In moments, his Valkyrie was gently pushing the Viper in front of him back towards the listing Pegasus.

Captain Gina 'Artemis' Jones of Red Squadron. calmed back down as she realized that the giant white robots where not Cylons, but the humans from the SDF-1. With a grimace, she started the manual sequence to reboot her computers entirely. Within five minutes, she finally got her system restarted, just as they neared the closed landing bays of the Pegasus.

"Pegasus, this is Captain Artemis. What happened?" she asked when she finally got her system cleared.

Commander Cain picked up his radio handset. "The same thing that happened to you. It looks like the Cylons managed to plant some sort of virus in our navigation array. I'll see what we can do to get you home." With a shake of his head, Cain shook off his thoughts. If he hadn't been assigned here to the SDF-1, he and his command would most likely be dead already."

- - -

"This is the situation, Captain Gloval. As far as we can tell, there are two operational Battlestars. The Cylons are bombing our worlds and I am needed at home!" Cain said loudly into his radio.

"Until you can track down that virus, your ship is totally vulnerable if you leave now. It is suicide! Here, the SDF-1 can provide a measure of safety while you fix your computers. Dr. Lang assures that he can make the SDF-1 battle ready within an hour and limited FTL capability in the same time." Captain Gloval stated into his radio. He waited impatiently for the computer to translate, so he started to pace.

"Those are our people out there! They are dying!" Cain shouted.

"And throwing yourself to die with them will not save the people that are alive now! Once the SDF-1 is ready, I suggest that we proceed. The repair ships that have been working on us may be invaluable." Captain Gloval sat down heavily. "My ship will support you and help protect your people, Commander! Let us help you in your time of need!"

Cain closed his eyes. "I- Thank you, Captain. This is not your war and the Cylons are not your enemy-"

"Sir! I've tracked down the code. It looks like if we use the older version of the navigation code, we should be safe," Major Drumm shouted from across the bridge.

"How long to install the program?" Cain said with an almost fervent intensity.

"A couple of hours to get it into the Pegasus and all fighter craft."

"You have two hours. Captain Gloval? Did you copy that? The Battlestar Pegasus will move out in two hours. You are free to join us. The Unicorn and Sea Wraith will be accompanying us at that time."

"I copy, Commander. The SDF-1 will be ready."

- - -

Location: Battlestar Pegasus 109 - CIC

It was now nearly an hour since the Cylon cyber attack on his ship. As of right now the work was slow going, as the computer techs were discovering several nasty surprises left behind by the virus. But they assured him that the Pegasus and the Vipers will be ready in another two hours. The only real break that they really had was that their Raptors weren't due to have the CNP nav program loaded in to the their computers until the next refit cycle.

'Nothing to do now except wait,' Cain thought. 'Wait while friends die.' He thought darkly as he reread a communiqué. Putting the printout aside he looked at the computerized map table and shuddered. Granted it was useful and less time consuming then pulling out the hard copy charts but…

He shook his head, and looked at the display right now it was showing all contacts, green for Military and red for Cylon. Another green one blinked and disappeared another Battlestar , another three thousand souls gone.

Walking up to the table Colonel Christopher Richards, said as looked at the screen, "If we don't do something soon this is going to be the shortest war in history,"

"Nothing we can do, Chris," Cain said to his XO.

"Comms , send a scramble to our Raptors have them start tracking all civilian contacts. Also start monitoring all civilian and commercial wireless frequencies."

"Yes sir."

Richards looked at Cain. "When they're finished with the fleet , they'll go after civilians."

"Exactly," Cain said as the tactical plot changed as numinous blue dots appeared on the screen. Looking at the table again he saw another he saw another green one flicker and disappear the Battlestar Atlanta the flagship of the fleet, gone.

"Wonder who will be in charge now?" Richards asked.

"Not us, we're in no shape to lead." Cain replied.

They didn't have to wait long for an answer, but what they didn't expect was a presidential reply.

Cain picked up a headset, turning to the comm. officer. "Put me on." Taking a deep breath. "Commander Adama, Madam President This is Commander Cain of the Pegasus I may have a solution to your problem."

- - -

Location: Battlestar Galactica BSG-078 in deep space, one hour later.

The solution was with Pegasus's Raptors scattered all over the system, was to have them round up as many civilian and surviving Military ships as possible. Galactica and her Vipers will provide cover until the Pegasus was finished with her repairs. She would escort the convoy to Ragnar Anchorage at sub-light.

It was surprisingly creative for Cain, Adama thought. When he asked his old friend why the change, the answer was simple.

"Will, when a single Cylon raider renders you helpless and nearly kills your entire command, it causes you to rethink your priorities."

The wounded Battlestar Galactica finally appeared at the rally point. Scorched armor showed where a tactical nuke had battered its armor. Commander William Adama looked over DRADIS display at the gathered ships with a taut frown. "So few ships. Any word on the Pegasus?"

"They are finishing up with the computer debugging. Commander Cain says that he should be arriving in just a few minutes," Dee said.

"The only good thing that came about this babysitting instead of going straight to Ragnar. was now we more then just the ten Mark II Vipers," Colonel Tigh groused.

"Battlestar incoming!" called out Gaeta. "It's the Pegasus, sir!"

"Thank god. Get Garris Cain on the line." Commander Adama felt a release of tension. With the Pegasus here, they had a fighting chance now."

"More incoming ships. Oh my god! What is that monster? It's one quarter bigger than anything hyper capable in our fleet," Gaeta almost yelled.

"Message from the Pegasus. Incoming ships are friendly. Repeat, incoming ships are friendly!"

"Get me Cain!" Adama commanded.

- - -

"You need to calm down, William." Probably not the wisest thing to say, Garris Cain thought to himself a moment later.

"Commander Cain, you bring a totally unknown ship with you to the rally point of every surviving human and you expect me to be calm?" Adama snapped back.

"What was I supposed to do? By the way, William old buddy, I'm bringing an alien warship that happened to save me and my crew from the Cylons?"

"You are just lucky we didn't have any ammunition or we might have fired on them before you gave the all clear." Commander Adama started to pace to the limit of the cord for his radio handset.

Cain cleared his throat. "Speaking of that, since your ship was in the process of being decommissioned-"

"I'm in charge, Cain. I have seniority and the Galactica will be battle ready. We will be jumping to Ragnar station in twenty minutes. I will leave the security of the President and the civilians to you until I get back."

"Even the Pegasus isn't going to be able to stave off the entire Cylon fleet! Once they get off their asses, they are going to be gunning for us with everything they have!"

"Then hold out as long as possible and then rally at Ragnar with the fleet. I'm going to be taking the Sea Wraith and the Unicorn with me. I've got battle damage that I have to get repaired."

- - -

Newly sworn in President Roslin just stared in shock at her aid. "What do you mean the Galactica is leaving?" she asked.

Billy shrugged. "I guess they need ammunition. And with the Battlestar Pegasus here, we're technically safer. I haven't got a good answer out of either commander about what that other ship is. It's a monster. It's three times the size of a Battlestar."

The pilot of Colonial One came back from the cockpit. "President Roslin? I've got Commander Cain on the line."

"Thank you." With that she followed him back up to the crowded cockpit. "Captain Apollo? What do you make of that ship?" she asked while pointing at the oddly colored blue and white behemoth.

"It's not one of ours or one the Cylon's. It's just... alien. And Madam President, Apollo is just my call sign"

The pilot handed the president a radio headset. "Commander Cain?"

"Yes, Madam President. I've been ordered to prepare to leave this area if the Cylons appear in force. I don't have the manpower or authority to order the civilians to follow, so I'm clearing that with the civilian authority." Commander Cain was writing down some orders on an instruction pad. He handed it off to his exec.

"Commander, you do realize almost half of the ships here have no FTL drives?"

"Yes, Madam President. I do." Cain clenched his jaw. Damn the Cylons.

"I will get back to you." President Roslin pushed the button to disconnect the channel. "How can he ask me to do that?" she whispered.

"He doesn't have a choice. There's no way we could defend this many ships here." Apollo pulled himself out of the cockpit and headed out.

"Where are you headed?" she asked.

"I've been ordered back to Galactica , they are short on pilots."

"Of course."

- - -

President Roslin stared out the window at the Battlestar Galactica. It snapped out of existence, on its way to Ragnar. "Order all ships to prepare to jump to Ragnar."

The Battlestar Pegasus slowly hove into view. Its docking bays were extended and it launched all fighters.

"Madam President?"

"We don't have a choice either."

- - -

"So we have a new location to prepare to fold to?" Captain Gloval asked Lisa.

She looked up from her console. "Yes, sir. But we are getting a lot of unprofessional chatter from about one half of the ships. They seem to be yelling that they are being abandoned."

Captain Gloval's blood ran cold. "Are they not FTL capable?"

Lisa just shook her head. "I don't think so, Sir."

Claudia grant looked over from her on station. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

"Possibly. We did drag Macross Island all the way here, after all. Get me Doctor Lang on the line." Captain Gloval sat in the Captain's chair and unhooked the phone from its hand rest. "Doctor Lang, I need to know how large an area the fold encompasses and how many ships we can drag along."

The rest of the bridge waited impatiently for the Captain to tell them what Lang was saying.

"I see. Well, you need to undo those changes. There are thousands of civilians out here that can't retreat if the robots attack again. I want it done in half an hour. Gloval out." Captain Gloval put down the handset. "Lisa. Get me Commander Cain. Tell him we may have an answer for the non-FTL capable ships here."

- - -

"He's serious?" XO Richards asked.

"He seemed to be. Now that I think of it, I should have asked Dr. Grentwe about that," Commander Cain said while rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. "It might take a lot of work to change our engines to do the same thing. But think of the tactical advantage to appearing with your entire fighter wing already deployed. Or being able to retreat without having to land them."

"Good point. Shall I inform the President?"

"Nah, she's about to jump. Let's make sure it's doable first. It'll be a nice surprise when we show up with all of the ships. Order all non-FTL ships to within ten kilometers of the SDF-1."

"What about us, sir? We going to hitch a ride or go it under our own power?" Richards asked.

"We've got perfectly adequate hyper drives. We'll leave after the last ship has jumped.

- - -

A Cylon Raider appeared in the distance. It noted the ragtag fleet and flashed back out.

"We've been made!" the Pegasus DRADIS operator called out.

"Battle stations! Send out the alert. Tell the SDF-1 that we will try to give them their ten minutes." Cain looked up from his central plotting screen. "Launch all Vipers with anti-missile loads."

Mark VII Vipers streaked out the launch tubes, raring for battle. Captain Gina 'Artemis' Jones winced at a sudden headache. She shook her head, then grinned viciously. Time to kill the bad guys.

With shocking suddenness, a Cylon Basestar appeared in the far off distance. It immediately launched fighters.

All of Pegasus's Vipers rocketed around to start shooting down missiles and Cylon fighters as they closed. This seemed to disconcert them, as this was the first real battle of this war.

Artemis whipped her Viper around. It didn't look like these new Cylons were really that much better than the old sims she trained against. They didn't seem to be the most imaginative flyers, she thought to herself.

Commander Cain lifted his radio handset up. The other officers on his bridge worked with tight efficiency behind him. "All Viper pilots! Push the Cylons back away from the SDF-1. We need a cleared buffer zone."

The pilots went to it with a will, even as another Basestar appeared in the distance. "Commander, it's going to be really tight here soon!"

Suddenly, the SDF-1 started to emit a weird glow. Soon the bubble expanded to encompass all of the close in civilian ships. With a sudden silent snap, they all disappeared.

"Jackpot! Let's load up people and get the hell out of here! Prepare for combat fighter recovery!" Cain shouted.

Artemis pulled her Viper in a tight spinning corner to lose the Cylon that was trying to kill her. "Commander! I'm reading a lone civilian ship that was transported!"

"We see it, Artemis. Not much we can do. He failed to follow orders and tried running. Return to Pegasus."

- - -

It' hot, hot, hot. Oh, It's hot, hot!

Ragnar Station: Five minutes ago.

All right, let's get this loaded!" Chief Tyrol called out to his people. He looked around as he watched the crew start to work frantically to load up the Galactica with the needed munitions.

"Sir! We found someone here!" one of the deckhands shouted.

- - -

Adama walked over quickly. He looked at the scruffy and ill looking man. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" he asked.

"I'm just a man trying to make a buck on the side. Once the Cylons attacked, I figured I'd head out here for a while." He smiled unconvincingly.

"Commander Adama!" a woman with a Lt. Commander's insignia on her uniform called out.

"Hold him under guard. Yes, Captain Terris?" Adama said to the captain of the Sea Wraith.

"Where are all the munitions? This place is just about empty!" she exclaimed.

"Explain, Major! What do you mean exactly?"

"I was sending a few of my crew to help load up your ship as a few of us served on the Pacifica, a fleet tender and transport. There should be enough munitions for ten Battlestars here! And I'm only seeing enough to barely top you off." Her short black hair peaked out of her uniform cap, while her slanted eyes that were green gave her an odd and beautiful exotic appearance.

"I thought it looked a bit bare, but is it really that bad?" Adama stared around.

"It's mostly the nukes that I'm worried about. There should be two thousand of them here. I'm only seeing about a dozen now. And those are all in the breaker, for repair and refurbishment."

"My God, they stole our nukes to use against us." Adama couldn't believe that, it just didn't seem possible. But it fit the evidence.

"How could they penetrate our security, Adama? We have means in place already! We may as well have left our doors open!" Fila Terris seemed very agitated. She spotted the man the Galactica crew had grabbed. "And who is this?"

"Just someone making a buck off the military. I don't mean any real harm. Just making some money," he said with a weedling tone.

"A weapons dealer, eh? On a base that is missing most of its munitions? Sounds like a Cylon sympathizer, Commander." Terris was giving him a very serious look.

The man suddenly reacted by grabbing the nearest soldier and throwing him a good ten feet into the nearest group of soldiers with superhuman ability.

"CYLON!" Adama yelled, instantly realizing what he was seeing. This things was far more advanced than any infiltrator he had _ever_ heard of during the first war.

Terris snapped out her hip pistol, even as the infiltrator grabbed a rifle from his guard that was just stunned at the action. She snapped off three shots even as a duo of guards unloaded their rifles into him before he could fire his weapon.

She toed the Cylon spy. "He's bleeding. My god, they can make them look that human?"

"Take his body aboard the Galactica. Maybe we can figure out some means of ferreting out these infiltrators," Adama said with a shaken voice.

"Commander? Do you want me to send over Fleet Scientist Grentwe to help in that?"

"A Fleet Scientist? What the hell is a Fleet Scientist doing on a repair tug?" Adama asked.

"She was assisting us with the SDF-1 and getting them operational. She's a bit... temperamental."

Adama smiled. "A real pain to work with, I take it?"

Terris just nodded mutely. "She holds a commissioned officers ranking of Captain. Non-ship-command. She's with the Naval Yards normally."

"She may be our best hope." He turned to the crew. "Listen up! Take all the bullets, missiles and bombs that this place has. We need everything!"

- - -

The BSG-109 Pegasus appeared outside the storm near Ragnar Station. "Get me an update from the fleet," Commander Cain called out. His bridge was quiet efficiency as they bent to the tasks of running a warship.

"Commander? It looks like all ships made it here. The SDF-1 is signaling that they are continuing repairs on their Fold Generators and main conduits."

"Doesn't that thing have a proper name?" he groused. He turned to his tactical board. "Launch a recon flight of Vipers. We don't want any Basestars sneaking up on us here."

"That interesting. Commander Hayes says the SDF-1 was interrupted before they could undergo some sort of christening ceremony by an enemy attack that eventually led them here."

"What?" Commander Cain asked. He realized what he had asked his communication's officer and he had then asked the SDF-1 about their name. "It is not lucky to be on a nameless ship," he noted.

"Yes, sir. But they really don't seem to care."

"We're not going to force them to give it a proper name," he told the officer.

"Of course, sir." He just neglected to mention that he had left the channel open.

- - -

"They have a superstition about nameless ships?" Captain Gloval asked.

"Yes, sir. I guess they think it is unlucky or something." Lisa Hayes shrugged.

"We have had a very bad string of luck, wouldn't you say?"

Claudia laughed about that. "I think that would be an understatement, Captain."

"I concur with our hosts. A nameless ship is unlucky. We were only hours from christening the SDF-1 the Independence when the Aliens attacked. Find me a bottle of bubbly and invite the captains from the Pegasus, Galactica, Sea Wraith and Unicorn. Also invite the President of their government."

"Are we still going to name the SDF-1 the Independence?" Lisa asked.

"No, I think we should name it for the people we carry within us now. The Macross."

- - -

"Captain Gloval wants us to do what?" President Roslin asked.

"I guess they heard something from one of the ships about un-named ships being unlucky. So they are going to do a quick ceremony to name it. As a courtesy, they invited you and the captains of our war vessels."

"This doesn't seem like quite the right time," the president noted.

"Ii it might make our side feel more comfortable in any fights, I say we take an hour and do it."

"Very well."

- - -

President Roslin sat at a conference table with the five captains that comprised her people's only hope. "So you are just planning on attacking the Cylons wherever they are?"

"That's what the Fleet is for, Madam President," Commander Adama said tersely.

"We have to take the offense before we become unable to press any attack," Cain injected into the conversation.

"Commanders and Captains, we have two Battlestars against the entire Cylon armada. Even if they only held themselves at the numbers at the end of the last war, you are looking at being outnumbered twenty-five to one. And they more likely continued to build up their fleets just like we did. So you are more likely outnumbered fifty to one. Are you going to risk the lives of over two hundred thousand civilians to throw your lives away?" The president looked over the five military officers.

Adama looked like he had bitten into something sour. "Are you ordering us to protect the civilian fleet and what? Run?"

"If I have to, yes."

Captain Gloval ahemed. His accent when he talked was atrocious. "And I have a duty to the civilians within the Macross. I have over fifty thousand of them crammed inside my ship. And I am still repairing my ship from the disastrous accident that sent us here."

"We have enough ships for flexibility here. We can defend the fleet while striking at the Cylons!" Captain Terris said suddenly.

Captain Freemont shook his head. "We have no supply lines, no bases and no supplies. We have to retreat to someplace and rebuild. It may take centuries, but attacking the Cylon fleet head-on is pure suicide. And you both know it!" he said while glaring at Adama and Cain.

"Our supply issue may not be quite as bad as we think," Adama said grimly. "It appears the Cylons are capable of using our munitions. Which means that we can raid on their depots and use theirs."

"The Macross has a factory complex within itself also. With your two fleet repair ships, you should be able to replenish your lost fighters," Gloval asked the captains of said ships.

"Technically correct. Given enough materials and manpower, we could build another Battlestar eventually," Captain Terris replied. She drummed her fingers on the table. "We may have to change our design philosophy. But I expect that our highest priority will be either fitting the non-FTL ships with FTL or adjusting the FTL engines on a few ships to make them have the same capability as the SDF-1. Sorry, the Macross. And replacing the lost Mark VII Vipers."

"As commander in chief, I then order the military to provide protection for this fleet until such a time as we find safe haven. Humanity must survive."

- - -

Ragnar Station: edge of the nebula aboard the SDF-1 Macross

"We've Cleared EM threshold," Vanessa reported. "Sensor effectiveness returning."

In front of them were the Cylon Basestars clustered together. They were spread out in an 'X', cutting out any escape without jumping through hyperspace.

"I've got it Vanessa," Lisa said. "Five Base ships, three hundred fighter contacts, Captain I'm picking up additional launches from Base ships. Computer estimates fighters now numbering over two thousand!"

Gloval picked up the phone next to his chair. "Lang, is the main cannon working?"

"I recommend against using it. We're still running checks on the power conduits with all the changes we've made to the fold drive."

"Damn." He hung up the phone. "Lisa get the Destroids out on the hull. If fire control is compromised at least we'll have point defenses. Primary weapons, target the nearest Basestar."

The three ships took up a position five kilometers above the Ragnar storm. Galactica and Pegasus positioned themselves on either side of the Macross, presenting their broadsides to the Cylons, while Macross turned to face the Basestars so it could bring its heavy particle and rail guns into play.

Then all hell broke lose. The three warships opened fire, the Pegasus and Galactica laying down an impressive barrage of counter fire . But the Macross and its Destroids were laying down a virtual hell-storm of lasers, rail gun rounds, particle beams, and missiles. The Macross's particle beams and heavy rail guns found their mark, hulling the center Basestar.

"Perimeter established, the closest Basestar heavily damaged," Lisa reported.

"Destroy it. Continue barrage. Launch Valkyries!"

The Macross's second and third barrages tore into the damaged Basestar destroying it.

- - -

BSG-109 Pegasus CIC

There was a brief cheer as one of the Basestars was destroyed, the first human victory of this war. It quickly died as the crew focused at the task at hand.

"One Basestar destroyed, others are falling back out of Macross's range, Macross fighter wing launching missiles at raiders," Major Drumm reported form the sensor station.

The words "launching missiles" didn't even do it justice as more than a thousand missiles were launched by both sides. Then the Vipers dove head long into the fray. Cain noticed that after the missiles were fired, the Valkyries broke off, and instead they changed their headings so that when they engaged the Cylons they would come in from slightly above or below. For the life of him, he couldn't understand why they bothered.

"Civilian ships emerging from EM threshold and jumping out in sequence."

"Commander! Two Basestars are breaking for our flanks. Bearing 45 degrees and 225 degrees. Looks like they're trying to flank us on both sides."

"Ignore them," Cain barked. "Right now they don't want to get in Macross's cannons range again and by the time they are in position we'll be out of here." Cain had to wonder what the thought process was in designing a battlecruiser and carrier in one hull.

The Cylons were surprised when the Valkyries joined the battle instead of rushing head long into a wall of fire. These humans came in angles that denied their raiders a chance to use their missiles.

- - -

Location: Skull One

"Not today, boys!" Roy exclaimed as he rolled his fighter out of the Cylons' line of fire. The Raider following Roy did a snap turn, turning, then quickly switching modes and hitting the afterburners. The result: his fighter was going one way, then shot off in another. The Cylon tried to match the maneuver but it shot past. Skull One completed its transformation and before the Cylon could turn around Roy destroyed it with a burst from his gun pod.

- - -

Location: BSG-78 Galactica

"All FTL ships have jumped, sir," Lt. Gaeta reported.

"Close distance with Macross, five hundred meters." Grabbing the handset Adama ordered: "All hands prepare for FTL jump." Turning to Tigh, he nodded. "I hope this fold works."

"STLs are now clearing the EM threshold."

"Dee, recall Vipers to the fold zone," Tigh ordered.

Duaella started recalling the fighters. "Commander, two fighters are still out there."

"Who?"

"Starbuck and Apollo," Dualla reported.

The ship shook as some Cylon missiles made it though the point defensive fire.

"We can't stand up to this forever!"

"Get me Starbuck," Adama ordered.

- - -

Location: SDF-1 Macross Bridge

"All ships and fighters in fold sphere!" Lisa reported.

"Execute fold!"

And the Remnant fleet escaped.

- - -

Location: SDF-1 Macross Bridge, 36 hours later.

Lisa stared at a digital screen that counted down from 33 minutes.

"T-minus five minutes, sir," Lisa said in weary voice.

Gloval nodded. "Sound general quarters."

"Aye, sir," Lisa said. Then she keyed the intercoms. "General, quarters, General quarters all hands man your battle stations!"

"T-minus three minutes, thirty seconds" Lisa reported .

"All decks, all sections report general quarters. Sir."

"We're getting slower," Claudia said from her station.

"By about forty-five seconds from last time," Gloval noted.

"Contact!" Vanessa shouted. "Bearing mark 32! Four base ships and thousands of fighters."

"Galactica and Pegasus confirm!" Lisa reported.

"When will this stop?" Captain Gloval moaned.

"Launch all Valkyries! Get the Destroids on deck for fighter suppression," Lisa called into her headset. "Keep them away from the civilian ships, Roy."

In his fighter, Roy just rolled his eyes. "Right, Commander." At the signal of the ground crew, he launched.

Back on the bridge, Lisa turned towards her captain. "Sir, all Valkyries are launching. I'm not sure how long they'll be able to do this. We are on hour thirty-six now. And the Cylons really don't appear to be stopping."

"THUNDERATIONS, DAMN IT! THAT'S IT! Gloval yelled in frustration. Throwing his uniform cap down on the Deck! "Open a line to the Galactica. Get me Commander Adama."

- - -

Location: BSG-078 Galactica CIC

"Captain Gloval on the line, sir," Dualla called out to Commander Adama.

"We're fighting a battle here! What does he want?" Adama called out; then rubbed his eyes. He slid his glasses back on.

"Repeat that, Macross?" the officer asked on the handset. "Sir, Macross is going to attack!"

"Attack? That's one brash captain. But it may be what we have to do. Get me Cain," Adama called, even as he took the handset. "Gloval? Adama here. We'll try to support you, but our civilians are our highest priority. We won't be able to do a proper offensive."

- - -

Location: Skull One during battle.

"All right, boys! All squadrons; form on me and press towards the suppression fire line. The Macross will be following. Prepared to get out of its way when they are ready to fire the Main Cannon." Roy Folker called out on the TAC net.

The Valkyries were proving their worth as short range superiority fighters. There multiple modes and plain innate agility were something that the Cylons were having a hard time adjusting to. Time after time, the Cylons were finding out that the whole flight characteristics would change dramatically when they shifted to their different forms. Unfortunately, by Colonial standards, they were very short-legged and unable to even lift off a planet under their own power. Dr. Lang was promising an upgrade that incorporated the contra-gravity and Colonial fuels that allowed this, but that was weeks away.

- - -

Location: BSG-078 Galactica CIC

The Cylons kept pushing, as they realized that the fleet was not preparing to flee as it had been wont to do previously. The massive white and blue ship was actually coming into range to try and bring the attack to the Basestar. The Basestar were backing away already well aware of the alien's hideously long ranged guns.

On the Galactica, Gaeta looked over from his sensor station. "Commander! We're detecting a huge buildup of energy from the Macross. These energy levels are... impressive."

"Dee, get me Apollo. What's going on out there?"

- - -

Location: SDF-1 Macross bridge

"Main gun charged!" Lisa shouted on the main bridge of the Macross.

"Target the lead ship. See if you can hit a second one beyond it!" Gloval commanded.

"Lateral bearing 132, mark 22.5 degrees. Two base ships are lined up at 100,000 miles," Claudia called out.

"Clear the fire lane! Get out of their, Skull Squadron!" Lisa called into her headset.

The Valkyires suddenly retreated outwards, leaving a large hole in their defense that the Cylons charged through. Anti-shipping missiles launched, this new, hated enemy that could jump with the defenseless ships would be destroyed. In front of them, the Marcos's front was splitting. Energy was coruscating between the two pylons even as energy levels were spiking.

Suddenly the buildup coalesced into a raving torrent of nuclear annihilation that just erased all of the missiles that were heading to it as if they were nothing, not the light nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The first Base Star was atomized immediately, the discharge only barely slowed. The second Base Star burned away like a piece of wood caught in blast furnace.

"Target one and two destroyed. Six Cylons have breached our perimeter! We have incoming! I'm detecting multiple nuclear weapons!" Lisa shouted.

- - -

Location: BSG-078 Galactica CIC

"SON OF A BITICH!" was heard all over the CIC from Tigh. "I picked a hell of a day to quit drinking," he mumbled.

"Galactica Apollo, Galactica Apollo What's going on what happened?" Dee asked.

"Big Fracking Gun," Apollo replied slowly.

"Repeat that, Apollo." Tigh said as picked up a handset.

"The entire front of the Macross is A BIG FRACKIN GUN!"

- - -

Location: SDF-1 Macross bridge

"The Cylons are retreating." Lisa paused as she listened to something from her headset. "Sir! I've got Dr. Lang on the line. He says that the new conduits are damaged. They couldn't handle the full power for the Main Cannon. They will require repair before we can move on."

Gloval sighed as he picked up his cap. 'Doesn't anything on this ship ever work smoothly?' "Tell him that has absolute priority. Launch reconnaissance birds and have them start scanning for Cylon activity."

- - -

Location: BSG-078 Galactica pilots birthing compartment

Boomer laid in her bunk, staring off into nothing after the Cylon attack that had been repulsed. Everyone in the room other than her was talking about the Big Frakking Gun that the Macross had used to wipe out two Basestars. And as she listened...

...so did something else.

- - -

Location: Occupied Caprica.

"We can't allow that ship to exist!" the blonde, female Cylon stated icily.

"We also can't afford to waste our resources destroying it with a kamikaze attack. We need to discover it's weaknesses and if we can, steal the technology for ourselves," the balding, male Cylon retorted.

"We have no spies on that ship. And from the information that we have garnered, that is because they aren't Colonists. They are from some place called Sol III," she said coldly.

"We must get someone on there! But with them knowing we exist from Adama, we are limited!"

They both stopped to listen to the communal mind of the Cylon race through an orbiting Basestar over Caprica.

They both smiled as they looked down the hill where Helo was placing explosives for his ambush.

"That may work. The infiltration drone, that surgically implants the controls into a normal human, to infiltrate this so called Macross. That should spread even more dissension and fear," the balding Cylon stated. "When we let them know it exists."

"Those controls do not work that well on all humans. Besides there is no way we can get them on board any of the ships in the fleet" the blonde retorted.

An Asian Cylon stepped out of the shadows. "We will find a way," she stated. "When will I be sent out to this Helo?"

"Soon."

- - -

Location: SDF-1 Macross, Bridge.

"How long until repairs can be made on the Macross so we can jump?" Captain Gloval asked Dr. Lang on the Bridge of the SDF-1 Macross.

"We can jury rig repairs and be on our way in just a few more hours, but I've been pouring over the schematics of the latest repairs. It appears that the Colonials changed the specs and mentioned it in a report that got lost in the paperwork. The replacement conduits are only going to be able to handle a fifty-percent load with any safety. That's barely enough to fire the main cannon at 1/10th power." Dr. Lang looked haggard as he leaned up against Lisa's command console.

"What? How could this happen?" the captain thundered.

"They didn't realize that the conduits were used by the main cannon because we didn't tell them about it. It's far beyond spec, even now, for just the Fold Drive we've rebuilt."

"Damnation. How long would it take for the repair ships to properly repair our conduits?"

Dr. Lang took a deep breath. This was not going to be liked at all. "About six weeks."

"What? That's almost as long as it took to fix the Macross when we crashed here!"

"We'd better inform Commander Adama about this soon, sir."

- - -

The fleet had been waiting for the ready signal from the Macross to jump again. When it had signaled that it would not be able to jump quickly, they had sent out patrols. Viper and Valkyries were sweeping the area.

Starbuck sighed to herself. "This sucks. Why are we on first sweep?"

"Better than being shot at," Apollo stated. "Here comes Skull Squadron on their sweep." He played with his communications. "Hey, Skull One! When are you going to get a real call sign?" he taunted with a grin.

"Don't want one, don't need one. Besides we stopped using callsigns years ago," Roy Folker replied with a grin.

"Oh!" Starbuck asked. "What happened?"

"Years ago we had a war, almost all of experienced pilots were killed and the draftees were getting to be as young as 15. The life expectancy of a pilot was about one mission back. We just stopped caring."

"Cut the chatter, people! Some of us need to use this channel!" a female voice said sourly on both their channels. "Macross Actual, out."

"Sheesh," Starbuck muttered. She was reaching for her channel control to switch back to Fleet frequencies when a new voice picked up.

"Skull One! This is AWACS Tiger One. We are reporting a discrepancy in body counts on the Olympic Carrier Liner. We are only getting about twenty bodies on thermal imaging, and they are all down in what we think is a cargo hold!" a new voice broke in.

Apollo and Starbuck just blinked in astonishment. "This is Apollo. How many people do you have listed on the Olympic Carrier?"

"Almost 1400 from Colonial records! And those are supposed to only about twelve hours old! And they sure as hell aren't yelling for help," the AWACS pilot said.

"Apollo to Galactica Actual! Olympic Carrier Liner may be compromised!" Apollo transmitted. He and Starbuck spun their fighters around and rocketed away towards the Olympia. Skull Squadron was just behind them.

- - -

Location: Battlestar Galactica 075, CIC

It took quite a while for Tigh to get the CIC quiet again after the Macross's Big Fracking Gun fired and destroyed two Baseships, wiping out hundreds of Cylon fighters and missiles for kilometers along the beam path. People were drunk on joy!

"Commander, I have Macross on scrambler." Petty Officer Dualla said,

"Over here, Dee." Adama picked up the phone. "Adama here."

"Commander Adama, I have distressing news. The Macross can't fold, the main cannon overloaded the new conduits."

"How long until you are FTL capable?" Adama asked.

"A few hours, if we push it but we can't fold very far and we're looking at six weeks for total repair." The tension in Gloval's voice was very evident, even through the translation software.

With a heavy sigh of, "Understood," Adama hung up the phone and turned to Dualla. "Dee, get me the president and Cain."

"Aye, sir. Sir, Apollo is reporting a problem on the Olympic Carrier."

- - -

Location: Cat's Eye AWAC Tiger One, Near Olympic Carrier in the Remnant Fleet.

"Tiger One, what the frak are you doing ?" Apollo shouted.

"I'm not writing them off yet, Apollo." Turning to his back-seater he said, "We're going to scan the hell out of this ship to look for anything remotely out of the ordinary."

The Cat's eye made several passes of Olympic Carrier at very close quarters.

"Got something, some sort of object attached on the hull; port side aft just in front of the engine cluster. Can't get close enough to see it. Skull One, we need a hand over here!"

- - -

Location: Colonial One, Remnant Fleet.

A four way 'telephone' conference was going on between President Roslin and Commanders Adama, Cain and Captain Gloval.

"So the Olympic carrier has been compromised," Roslin stated. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and reseated her glasses. "What are our options?"

"We take the ship..." Gloval said brusquely. "One of our Cat's Eye and Valkyries have found some sort of parasite mine attached to the Olympic Carrier."

"Where?" Cain asked. The last time the Cylons had tried this particular trick was back during the first war.

"Above the lower engine cluster, it set off the Valkyire's radiological alarm."

"Disarming a nuke is going to be a nasty prospect," Adama said solemnly.

"Then we don't disarm it, Commander Adama, we negate it. Madam President, if we can capture the Olympic Carrier intact we can relieve some of the overcrowding on some of this ships in the fleet. A Valkyrie can destroy or remove the mine and then we send in Marines to secure the ship," Gloval suggested in his gruff manner.

Audacious tactics were something of the norm for Captain Gloval, the other leaders had found. But when you didn't have a lot of experience, you had to have someone in charge that was will to think outside the box.

- - -

Location: Battlestar Pegasus 109, CIC.

"Richards, prep the Marines for boarding operations. We're taking back the Olympic Carrier."

"Yes, sir!" The XO grimaced; the fatigue was catching up too him from the previous battles.

"And I'm supposed to be the hot-headed one," Cain muttered.

- - -

Location: Near Olympic Carrier, Remnant Fleet.

"Repeat that again, Lisa?" Roy asked looking down at the small COM window on his HUD. He had always wondered why that feature was in the communications system. Now he knew it was to tell if you were given an order or if some one was playing a prank. Even if the order sounded insane.

"Remove the mine from that ship," Lisa repeated.

Roy looked at the mine. The mine was about the size of the battleloid's fist and looked like it was a box covered with thrusters with several spider-looking arms embedding themselves into the hull of the of the luxery liner.

Claudia moved over to Lisa's station looking over Lisa's shoulder. "Don't tell me you are scared, Roy?"

"No, I just want to make sure we're clear you want me to futz around with an alien nuclear weapon." After a second, Roy smiled with a devil may care grin. "Roger, I'm removing the nuke now. Tiger One, Skull Squadron and Galactica patrol; clear the area."

Skull One's four head-lasers rotated and got to work. That's when the Olympic Carrier engines roared to life, Roy's Valkyrie nearly smashed into the engine pods. Fortunately Roy steadied his battleoid and continued cutting.

"Skull One, abort-abort-abort! It's heading for the Macross!" Lisa ordered in calm voice.

"I'm not... There, got it!" With surprising speed Roy grabbed the mine and threw it over the Valkyrie's shoulder.

Starbuck came in at full burn with a tight cork-screw turn. She peppered the nuke with her rail-gun rounds now that is was far enough away from anything important. Just in case it blew, of course . "WAHOOOO!" she screamed as the conventional ordinance exploded.

"One problem solved. Now how do we stop this thing?" Apollo asked as he followed her in another loop towards the accelerating ship.

- - -

"Okay Hotshot," Roy thought, "You're standing on the hull of a runaway star liner about to crash with your carrier. So what do you do NOW?"

"Roy, get out of there!" Lisa ordered

"Not yet!"

He glanced into the hole he had cut into the star liner to remove the mine and saw some sort of storage tank. Acting almost on instinct, Roy's battleoid reared its fist and rammed it into the tank. A fine blue mist leaked out from around its arm. When Roy pulled the Valkyrie's arm back, the leak became a torrent, which quickly crystallized as it hit the cold of space.

"THAT CRAZY SON OF A BITICH!" Apollo screamed in shock as he watched as fuel rush out of the star liner. Folker's Valkyrie was swept away by the tons of escaping fuel, which acted like a propellant pushing the Olympic Carrier off its suicidal run. The Star liner's engines had immediately cut out when Skull One had punctured its fuel tank.

Apollo caught a glimpse of the Valkyrie it was covered in a semi frozen fuel.

"Apollo how, do I look? I can't see anything."

Apollo was stunned. This man has just pulled a stunt that even Starbuck would think twice about. Then Apollo looked closely at the amount of Tylinium that covered the Valkyrie. "Frack!" He then thought quickly and furiously, 'Even in hard vacuum this stuff is dangerous.' Quickly Apollo said, "Commander, don't light your engines. Your machine is covered in fuel."

"How, bad?" Roy asked, having guessed this newest problem.

"You look like you got into a snowball fight. If you light up your engines now, I think half the fleet will see you," Starbuck pointed out cheerfully

"Great, if I eject do you think the explosive bolts will set this stuff off ?" Roy asked.

"Wouldn't chance it," said Apollo. "We'll get you a tow back to the Galactica."

"Why the Galactica?" Roy asked.

"Well considering you've never encountered Tylinium before, I doubt the Macross has scrubbers that render this type of fuel inert. I'll call the Galactica and arrange a tow." Apollo said in a amused tone.

Roy got the impression that the colonials found his situation funny.

Location: Galactica landing deck, Port Hanger deck.

A Raptor towed Skull One to the Galactica. Once on the landing deck, the LSO (Landing signal officer) guided the blind battleoid to the elevator.

The sight of Skull One walking through the Airlock sent the hanger deck into a brief panic. Chief Tyrol quickly got the deck gang under control. Several of the fire fighters began spraying down the battleoid with water mixed with foam. After what seemed like hours, enough frozen Tylinium was washed away. He could see now that main cameras were no longer covered in frozen fuel. After a few more minutes of spraying down the battleoid, the all clear was given. The fuel was no longer a threat.

Keeping a safe distance, Adama and Tigh watched from a catwalk at the far end of the hanger.

"Okay, clear the Area." Roy warned. All activity stopped when the battleoid started walking. The hanger crew watched in amazement as Skull One appeared to walk almost casually across the deck, easily avoiding obstructions on the crowded hanger floor and low hanging support beams.

Apollo noted that the Valkyrie's movement was organic, not a clunky or machine like. There was a fluidity of movement that suggested that there was more than just a pilot manipulating controls..

"Why the hell did they build these things?" Chief Tyrol groused as he saw this machine walking towards them. He founded its size intimidating. Even its squadron insignia was unsettling. It looked like a white skull and crossed bones on a black background.

"They'll tell us when they're ready. After all we have our share secrets." Apollo pointed out.

"They could have told us about that big frakking cannon." Tyrol snapped back.

"Would you tell them how many nukes we have aboard?" Apollo countered. "No we're all in the same situation. We just haven't had a chance to really sit down and talk to them. Hell, we don't know where they're from."

The crew watched as the Valkyrie continued to move easily across the deck, until it reached a fairly open spot in the bay. The Valkyrie's head turned from side to side, as if checking to see if it had enough room. Suddenly, the front and back of the battleoid split parallel to the deck. Its arms swung inward and it dropped forward on its landing gear when the transformation was done. What had been a robot, now looked like a fighter.

"Wow," Apollo snorted, "Now seems to be a time to start that conversation." He climbed down the catwalk heading for Valkyrie, with Tyrol following behind him.

- - -

Location: Sarnis System, deep space.

Near a cold and lonely ice covered mountain, gravity ebbed and flowed unusually. Quantum measurement changed their constants just slightly.

Suddenly, gravity shifted radically. Space and time roared and rended with bright nuclear light. And within the deeps, great behemothian starships appeared. Miles of green armor, glowing hot from the audacious journey.

Twenty great warships of the Zentraedi had arrived.

And their arrival had not gone unnoticed. A Cylon fighter, the lethal looking Scimitar, appeared just fifteen miles away within moments, sent from the conquered world of Caprica. Its dim sentience took in the situation and the mammoth monsters of metal. In a flash of red to gold, it disappeared back the way it came.

Ten minutes later, its return at the head of hundreds of fighters was actually noticed by the lumbering giants.

On the bridge of the lead vessel, the Zentraedi commander sneered. "All ships, prepare a long range bombardment of the new ships." All over the ships, needle like energy weapon emplacement were unsheathed. Even as the Scimitars closed the distance to use their own rail rounds, the Zentraedi fired a blistering salvo from their functioning weapons, a mere fifty percent of their firepower. The protoculture had not had time to regenerate their ships to minimal effectiveness.

Against such targets, it was slow, clumsy and overkill. But it could strike at long ranges and any of the Cylon fighters were destroyed if they were so much as touched by the blue-white beams. Even as the first beams faded, white battle pods launched.

As one, the Cylons turned and then flashed through their hyperjumps.

"Impossible!" the Zentraedi commander shouted. "No race has the ability to put fold drives in such a small vessel."

His second in command walked up and saluted. "Lieutenant Commander Zoltz! We have detected a trace of Zor's ship on the finder beam."

Zoltz gnashed his teeth. "Prepare to refold back to the main fleet." It galled him to leave without crushing these inferior foes, but he had his orders. Return at all costs if it is possible to track the ship. "Will we be able to transit better this time?"

"Yes, we don't foresee any additional complications. It will be rough, but our ships should pull through with no problem."

- - -

Location: Battlestar Pegasus BSG-109, CIC.

Garris Cain rubbed his forehead as he listened to his marines plan their boarding of the compromised luxury liner. He was starting to feel a bit punchy from the stims he was using. "Getting too old for all this crap," he muttered to himself. The sounds and smells of unwashed soldiers triggered a memory from three years ago. Commander Garris Cain stood on the CIC of his faithful Pegasus. One of the older style Battlestars, it was due for decommissioning in just a few years.

_Colonel Mayers looked up from the DRADIS console. "That shuttle from The Belarios is on last approach."_

_Laurie Hent looked up from her damage control station. "The Belarios? The hero of that Sagittaron ballad?" _

_Cain almost ignored it. Literary quotes and characters were never his big thing. Especially Sagittaron ballads. But this was a good time to bond with the young woman officer in a fatherly manner. "Which ballad?" _

_"Just one of their many revolutionary ones. They have a lot of those, of course." She smiled, showing off her dimples. _

_Suddenly, she had his entire attention. "That isn't the ballad that had the sneak attack against the enemy captain, was it?" _

_She blinked. "Yes it is."_

_"Colonel Mayers! Stop that ship from docking!" Cain yelled out._

_"Sir?"_

_"That's an order!" he snapped out. "Signal action stations!" _

_"Shuttle Uvon is not turning away!" Mayers shouted. He picked up his headset. "Brace for impact." _

_That was when the shuttle rammed into the starboard landing bay and triggered its nuke. _

_-_

_"Commander Garris James Cain, we are required by law to ask again, how do you plead?" Admiral Isles, the officer in charge of his court martial asked, gavel in hand. He was seated in the center of the three officers at the wooden desk on a raised podium. _

_"Not guilty." Cain stood stiffly at attention in front of the judge's panel. His short hair had almost turned completely gray since that fateful day. Behind him, reporters and his few friends waited with bated breath _

_He ignored Commander Blaine. They had worked together and served for a while, but it was purely professional. It was Commander Patricia Cain. A distant niece, she had felt the calling to enter the colonial navy like most of their family had. She was different though. She was hard, cold and ambitious. Part of the modernization clique, she was looking to advance her career here today, not be impartial judge. From what he could tell, she would let him hang to 'prove' that she was unbiased, even if she thought he was innocent. _

_With family like that, who needed enemies?_

_"We have reviewed your orders, Commander. You had been given sealed instructions for heightened awareness due to the difficulties on Sagittaron, which was your patrol area. You allowed an enemy vessel to dock with your ship and allowed them to detonate a nuclear weapon, killing half of your crew," Isles said in clipped, stately tones. "Upon interviewing your surviving staff, we have determined you followed the dictates and even responded, barely, in such a matter to save your command. Your bravery personally saved four of your CIC officers." _

_Garris Cain kept himself at attention, barely giving himself hope._

_"On a vote of two to one, we find you not guilty. Accordingly, you are hereby remanded to active duty with all the privileges of your rank and time in grade. The battlestar Pegasus is finishing up repairs. You are ordered to resume your command post haste." _

_Cain had known that. Strangely enough, the repair had added another twenty years of operational time to the old ship. Not that the name Pegasus was likely to be left unused, but the old ship deserved vindication for surviving such a drastic attack. If that shuttle had actually been taken deep into the battestar, none of them would have survived. _

_"Dismissed!"_

- - -

Location: Colonial Remnant Fleet, Forty hours since The Olympic Carrier incident.

President Roslin took her seat in the Raptor. Across from her were commanders Cain and Adama. As the Raptor left Colonial One, Adama spoke, "What do we know about our allies, Garris?"

"Not much. Captain Glovel barred our teams from entering classified locations of the ship. He took precautions keeping the interaction to a minimum with the ships crew. The asteroid we found them near used to be an island.

"An Island?"

"Yes, Will, an Island. From what we speculate, they preformed a low altitude fold and it did more then move the ship, it took everything around it."

Roslin shook her head as she replied, "It sounds as like it was some accident. But what were they doing that low?"

"Taking off. Yes, it's hard to believe… but that monster of theirs is capable of planetary landfall."

"They were under attack and tried get away," Adama surmised.

"Oh yes, the strange thing their jump was originally planned to take them only five-hundred thousand kilometers,"

Adama, grunted. "Too convenient," he mumbled. "On the eve of the Cylon attacks a massive, highly advanced, hideously over-gunned warship, with far more amazing fighters and crewed by humans appears allowing us to out fight, out run, any Cylon force and can drag all our STL ships with us."

"What are you getting at Will?" Garris Cain fixed Adama with a stare, daring him to say it. Yes the Macross seemed to be a gods' send, but the ship arrived six weeks before the attacks. But to be blunt Captain Gloval could have just left them all.

"It's too convenient. We know that the Cylons can appear human. And Doctor Baltar confirmed that there is no way a control interface could move something as big and bulky as their robot fighters, with that kind of fluid of motion."

"So you think, the Macross is some sort of Cylon trap?" Roslin asked not convinced. "Adama just because our leading scientist said it's impossible doesn't mean it is. I doubt with our current construction methods we could build something like the Macross. Adama right now we have only one ally and one chance for the our civilization to survive."

Laura took a breath. "Yes it's to convenient when they showed up, but what choice do we have? We can't do anything. We need them or we lose half the civilian population. Right now our military forces are one old postwar Battlestar, a Museum relic, two fleet tenders and three fleet cargo ships. Can you honestly tell me we can defend two hundred odd civilian ships? Half of them can't jump, and the other half are already over crowded."

Adama knew she was right. Even with the Macross their tactical situation was bad, without it… he didn't want to even think about it. "I'm just saying that we should be careful."

"And we are, Will. Captain Gloval didn't have to help us, as soon as his fold drive was back online he could have just left."

"Changing the subject. What about the Olympic Carrier?"

"The computers are clean, the Sea Wraith purged them, inspection teams have found another three Cylon modules, one was the same kind that was found in Galatica's CIC."

"How many?" Roslin asked.

"Seventeen out of fifteen hundred forty-eight. The survivors are on board the Galactica in isolation."

"And how long till we can start moving people to the Olympic?" Roslin asked.

"Lt. Commander Terris said not long, the only real damage is the hole in the Tylinium tank."

Then the intercom beeped. "Attention we will be landing on the Macross momentarily will passengers please prepare for landing."

- - -

They expected conditions on Macross to be as bad as the rest of the fleet, the Colonials expected anything except this.

The first thing that should have set off mental alarm bells was when they we're greeted by Lt. Commander Hayes next to a waiting limo.

Then the limo was joined by a police escort.

Then came the city.

"I've heard of ships being miniature cities but this is ridiculous," Roslin said as the limo passed through Macross City's shopping district. 'But… since I am here, maybe I'd better see if I can get some more clothes, after all, I only have two suits,' she thought.

The limo was soon entering the military section of the ship.

"Big guard," Cain observed as a battleoid walk a patrol behind a chain linked fence.

"I've got to be dreaming." Adama just wished Tigh was here so he'd have something to drink right now.

The motorcade continued until it reached the entrance of the base.

"You seem to be taking all this in stride, Commander Cain?"

"Madam President I've made it a point never to be surprised by these people again. What can the possibly do top this?" Cain said pointing behind towards Macross City.

"Transform the ship?" Adama hazard a guess.

- - -

The limo entered the base, which appeared to be the same sort of base you would see on the surface of the planet and continued in before coming to a stop at the base administration building. The grounds were landscaped with green grass, trees and a perfectly simulated sky. The Colonials barely had a chance to enjoy the simulated weather of the Macross before being escorted inside. It was like

The Colonials were lead through the building, until they entered a briefing room waiting for them . There was Captain Gloval, and Dr. Lang sitting around an oblong table with a view screen in front of it.

"Welcome aboard. I trust you had a pleasant journey?"

"Captain, we had a very pleasant journey. It's not often that one rides a limo to get around on a ship," President Roslin replied as she shook his hand.

"Let's begin," Gloval said as he gestured to the seats. The Colonials sat and the meeting began.

- - -

The meeting started and last for hours, the first topic was military aide, eventual the topic shifted to the repairs Macross's fold drive and 'BFG'. Gloval is adamant about using the fleet tenders to repair the Macross. President Roslin refuses saying that fleet tenders are need In the civilian fleet, then Dr. Lang finally intercedes with an alternate proposal.

"Until this happens, the main cannon can not fire," Dr. Lang gestured to the display at the front of the table.

The Colonials and even Captain Gloval had the same stunned expression. On the large screen a rather crude 3D animation showed the Macross well undergoing a transformation that more or less resembled the humanoid form.

Cain just lowered his head to his hand pinching the bridge of his nose as he felt a headache coming. He groaned tiredly, as of a person that as heard the lamest (and quite possibly biggest) joke ever conceived by man. "Captain what the hell were your shipwrights thinking when they built your ship?"

Hardly diplomatic but given the nigh-ridiculous fix proposed by the Macross's chief engineer, Adama and Roslin could hardly fault Cain for the outburst.

"They weren't because we didn't build this ship, we rebuilt it."

"What?" Roslin said in a quiet, yet deadly intense voice.

"Madam President, this ship crashed landed on our home world before we were advanced enough for interplanetary flight," Gloval explained.

'Explains why this ship was on the ground,' thought Cain to himself.

"And where is your home world?" Adama asked.

"We don't know, after our first fold, our star charts were off. Doctor Lang is of the opinion we shifted into another universe As to where we are from Earth."

This was another shocked to the Colonials, Earth not Sol III.

"Prove it," President Roslin demanded. "Prove to me that you are from Earth."

"Prove to me that you are from Caprica," Gloval stated in a firm voice. "Prove to me someone who has never been to Caprica, someone who never heard of the Colonies. The question is do you trust us President Laura Roslin?"

Roslin sighed but then replied, "I see your point. And we have to trust you our lives are in your hands."

"Ten years ago, this starship crashed landed on Earth." On the screen showed a badly mangled ship that bore little resemblance to the ship as it now appeared. "At the time Earth was a divided planet; nearly two hundred separate sovereign nations. Seeing as we weren't alone in the universe and that space would be a new and deadly battlefield, we realized that a united earth would stand a better chance of survival. Various nations came together to spearhead the formation of a United Earth Government. Some nations saw this as a threat to their autonomy and national identity, and apposed the formation of a United Earth and a war was fought."

"What are you getting at Captain?"

"Madam President, if by some miracle we do find a way home, you need to understand Earth isn't going to be the answer to all your problems."

"You're expecting problems in us dealing with your government?"

"Yes, ma'am but that's not the only problem the other is that my ship was engaged with giant aliens that consider this ship just a tiny gunboat. In our own universe."

'Did he say something about giants?' was the Colonials thoughts.

And that was when Lang showed a picture of a dead Zentraedi with a human near the body's head to give an emphasis of scale.

- - -

Some hours later the Colonials were on the raptor heading back to Colonial One. It had been a long day.

"Well that was educational," Cain said. "Just when you thought they couldn't surprise us any more, they do."

"I can't believe they have that on their ship," Adama said in a slightly dazed tone, his mind still trying to grasp the reality that was the Macross. Anything to avoid the thought of aliens that used ships in the thousands that were much larger and more deadly than anything the Colonials had.

"Yes, their little city was impressive."

"Impressive. The only things it was missing was a zoo and a circus," Roslin pointed out.

Boomer and Crashdown looked at each other up in the cockpit area. 'Zoo?' Crashdown mouthed.

Boomer just gave him a look of, 'Like I'm supposed to know.'

- - -

Location: Battlestar Galactica, two days later.

Sharon lay gasping on the deck, drenched for some unknown reason. Dimly, she realized that she must be near the Galactica's water holding tank.

That might explain her state. Maybe she had attempted to drown herself. But the only problem was with that, is that she didn't feel suicidal. Just very confused.

And starting to be scared.

- - -

Adama walked down the corridor to CIC. "Mr. Gaeta, have you finished the schedule for reactivating the starboard deck?" William Adama asked.

"Yes, sir. We figure it would only take a maximum of five days to get it as fully functional as we can," the officer said. "But the starboard launch tubes are out of the question."

"Why?"

"The catapults and bulkheads were removed to make a gift shop. And almost all metal is slated for Vipers." Gaeta answered.

"Wonderful, Colonel Tigh, I want a status update on recruiting post haste. Sea Wraith and Unicorn have started to produce more Vipers. We are going to need pilots," the commander of the Galactica stated. "Any word on the simulators from the Ma…."

Adama didn't finish his sentence. As under their feet, the deck shook in deep beats. Light suddenly lit up at the damage control station.

"We're losing pressure in the water holding tanks!" Tigh shouted.

"Diverting water to the aft holding tanks. Pressure is also dropping in the aft tanks," Gaeta called out.

Dee called out, "Message from Pegasus. They are reporting multiple explosion and vapor visible on the Galactica. They are requesting orders."

"What the hell is going on!" Adama shouted.

- - -

"You have a Cylon on your ship!" Garris stated. They were sitting in a briefing room.

"Why don't you tell me something I don't know?" William retorted. His temper was shortening by the minute.

"Well, the good news is we now know that. The bad news is that there are probably more of them on all of the military ships. And we have no idea on how to spot them."

Dr. Grentwe walked in. "Commander Adama. Commander Cain. Reporting as ordered," the scientist said with a curled lip. It did not improve her features on the older scientist. Her graying hair was held up in a tight bun. The military uniform looked... uncomfortable on her.

"Captain Grentwe, at ease." Adama had already decided that he would handle this touchy scientist from a position of authority. "How have you come on figuring out the Cylons?"

"I've already done a statistical analysis and dissection with one shot at Ragnar Station.

From the tissue samples it looks like these new Cylons are almost one hundred percent human with no abnormalities."

"What? That thing threw grown humans like dolls!" Adama exclaimed.

"We believe they are fast-grown clones. Unfortunately, anyone that knew of the procedures to identify illegal bio-constructs are back on the colonies. All that Dr. Lors and I could remember is dated and probably inaccurate."

"And its superhuman strength?" Cain asked.

"We think it might be related to how apes can use a larger percentage of their strength than a human. But even that is just a guess." She shrugged her shoulders.

"I need an answer. We've got infiltrators on our ships. And I need an answer yesterday," the Galactica's commander stated.

"I've contacted President Roslin about biochemist specialists within the fleet. Luckily, there was one on an Argoship. We are having him transferred to the Sea Wraith," Grentwe explained.

"And what about our water situation?" Cain asked.

"That's a bit trickier. While plain old water might be common, water that is untainted with alien mitrochondria is entirely different. Even that water is safe most of the time. But that one percent that isn't is a real killer. We'll either need to reprocess the water from an Oort object or find one that is clean," she replied.

"We've got ten raptors out and both Sea Wraith and Unicorn have two more. If there is water out there that is safe, we'll find it," Cain said.

"Very well. Captain Grentwe, you are dismissed."

The older woman snapped a passable salute and left the briefing room and headed to the docking station. In a dark corridor, inhumanly strong hands gripped her neck and tossed her down an even darker side corridor.

Captain Gina 'Artemis' Jones slammed her fist brutally into Grentwe's kidneys and then pushed her down the empty passage. "Nothing personal, 'doctor', but you are getting too close for comfort." The blonde woman smiled sarcastically. She walked over the old scientist. "Stupid human. Did you really think that we would allow you to develop the

technique to detect us-"

The cracking gunshot was deafening in the narrow corridor. Artemis looked down at her chest, where blood was seeping out of the wound. "How?"

Grentwe smiled. "Bi-itch. I was... bait. We needed... a second sample." She started coughing.

"Dr. Grentwe! Medical help is on the way." Lt. Commander Terris looked down at the captain. "For both of you."

- - -

'Boomer' finally forced down her fingers. With a force of will that surprised herself, she pushed her hand away from the explosive and its igniter button.

"Water! We hit jackpot, Boomer! Did you hear me, Sharon? We hit it big time, Sharon!" Crashdown yelled out.

- - -

Queen of the Dead

Location: Refuge Fleet, near an Oort cloud object.

The Galactica was deep inside the colonial refuge fleet. The fleet repair ship Seawraith nestled up close to it as the decommissioned landing bay was being worked on. The Macross and Pegasus were covering the high orbits above the fleet. Alert Vipers and Veritechs patrolled the area.

"Well, we found our clean water," Adama said. In front of him he had photo with the water comet they had found. "And now we have to harvest it. And that's going to be man-power intensive. And dangerous."

Cain nodded in solemn agreement. "Madam President, I'm not sure the military is going to be able to spare that many people and effectively defend the civilians. And there are no civilian agencies that we could draft for this."

"I've barely started on the restructuring of our government during this crisis. No one has the manpower for another, new, large project." She shuffled some papers.

"Pardon, buy why is this such a large problem?" Gloval asked gruffily. "Are you saying you are going to send down people in space suits to mine the water manually?"

"Unless you happen to have an ore extractor that can be modified for water extraction in your left hip pocket, yes," Garris Cain replied snidely.

Colonel Tigh chuckled at that image.

"Of course not. But I do have a squadron of destroids that could be fitted for labor. Laser cutters and such should make this a trivial job," the captain of the Macross said, visibly reigning in his temper.

"And you have the shuttles to land that and pick up the water?" Roslin asked curiously. She took off her glasses and tapped them silently on the conference table.

"No, but the Macross is land-assault qualified. The destroids will deploy through the Daedalus's ramp," he explained. "It should take us only an hour or so to gather several hundred tons of water needed."

"What, exactly, is a destroid?" Cain finally asked.

"Non-transformable mecha. Usually crewed with one or two pilots. Much tougher than our Veritech fighters, but much slower too."

Adama narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.

- - -

"Commander!" Geata yelled out.

"Mr. Geata?" Adama asked as he looked up from the operations table.

"We have a situation on the prison ship, the Astral Queen! They were reporting a prison riot and then were cut off!" the officer yelled back.

"Keep trying to raise them." He kneaded his brow in furious thought. "Get me Sgt. Hadrin ASAP. Tell her I need her to run a mutiny counter-OP."

- - -

"I don't think you understand, Commander Adama!" Tom Zarek said into his microphone just ten minutes later. The bridge of the Astral Queen was dim and almost threatening. "We are not going to be left to rot in our cells! We are demanding to be released. That is why we took over the Astral Queen! We will be heard."

"Mr. Zarek, we will not negotiate with terrorists who have mutinied and taken a ship! Your demands to speak to President Rosalin are denied. You demands for a free election are also denied. We are in a state of martial law. Our species is under the threat of extinction and I'm not going to let some crackpot zealot dictate to me!" Commander Adama snapped forcefully. "Surrender yourself and your men now and I will be lenient."

"You know that I don't surrender, Commander!" Tom Zarek replied with almost a snarl.

Adama made a chopping motion over to Tigh, who spoke into his own microphone off in the distance. "Mr. Zarek, holding a valuable ship hostage does seem to be right up your alley. There are differences between this and what you did in the past..."

"Oh? Kind, scale? Facists in charge of the government?" Zarek replied. "Nothing seems to have changed to me."

"Mutiny in space under martial law is summary judgment."

Zarek blinked. "Are you threatening to have me killed if I don't surrender?" he asked incredulously.

"No." Adama heard the sounds of yelling and gunshots. "I'm saying I've already ordered Sgt. Hadrin to deal with all mutineers appropriately," he said grimly. He waited patiently, until a new voice came on the line.

"Hello?" the female voice asked.

"This is Galactica actual. Sgt. Hadrin?" he asked.

"Yes, sir!"

"Good work. Sanitize the ship of anyone not already in their cells."

- - -

Rick Hunter sighed as he looked over the forlorn and mangled circus flyer in front of him.

"Down here moping again, huh, Rick?" a boisterous voice called out from the small hanger's doorway.

"Oh, Roy. Hey." The young man pulled a bit more of the tarp back. The red and white colors looked very out of place in the high tech, but very spartan metal room.

"That is the sound of a young man in love with problems. Give it up, kid!" Roy said as he walked over and grabbed the younger boy in a headlock.

"Hey!"

"That girl you found giving you problems?" the CAG of the Macross flight group asked and he physically pulled the young man away from his destroyed airplane.

Rick finally shrugged himself out of Roy's grasp. He slumped in defeat. "When it was just us, we were fine. Well, except for the nearly starving to death thing."

"But now she's back with her family and friends, you feel out of place?"

"Yeah."

Roy was distracted a second as a group of colonial pilots walked by, heading to a demonstration of technology transfer that he was going to have to deal with. He pulled his attention back a second to his quasi-family friend. "Have you told her that?"

"What?"

Roy shrugged. "Just let her know how you feel. If she doesn't feel the same any more, you might want to break it off." He suddenly grinned. "I happen to have a few openings for good pilots. Flying one of these babies should distract you from your lover problems." The CAG suddenly started trotting. "Quit moping around! You are too young to be sad!" He suddenly took off at a run.

- - -

Lt. Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace gave a once-over on all the pilots from the Galactica and Pegasus. Cpt. Lee 'Apollo' Adama threw her back a tight grin as Lt. Commander Lisa Hayes walked in with an itinerary on her clipboard. She seemed to have a sour expression on her face.

Just a minute later the tall and lanky blond CAG of the Macross walked in and sat next to Lisa near the front of the room. The pilots filtered into their seats that were set up so that they could all see the speakers.

"Thank you for your punctuality, Commander Folker," Lisa said sardonically.

"No problem, Commander Hayes," Roy replied just a bit injudiciously. A titter of laughter, quickly suppressed, drifted across the room.

"Let's get this started. Dr. Lang will not be able to make this presentation. So it is up to the two of us." Lisa stood up and activated a display on the screen. "This is an upgraded VF-1J. A command equipped variable superiority fighter. We have managed to put together the new engines from what we were able to glean from your older engines from a Mark-III Viper you sent over to us."

"Pretty sweet ride and considered a bit antiquated by you guys. With this Tylinium fuel you guys use, you can easily enter and break orbit on a standard 1G planet." Roy grinned. "Much better than we could hope to do before we met you."

"With this upgrade, the tactical flexibility of our variable fighters increases a whole magnitude," Lisa explained as more breakdowns appeared on the screen behind their raised desk. "This is only of limited concern to yourself, I'm sure."

The colonial pilots grinned at that. Apollo nodded and said, "Well, we appreciate that you guys won't require a carrier to land on a world just to pick up a single fighter."

"As Dr. Lang's team discovered, your Mark III vipers have a very simple, manual control system. Something that actually saved the Galactica when the Cylons attacked. It is about a generation or two ahead our own manual controls we had before we started integrating robotechnology into out systems," Lisa continued. "After asking some questions to Dr. Gwentre and her staff, we believe that your control systems on the Mark VII Vipers are about fifty percent less efficient than our current systems."

"What the frak?" Starbuck exclaimed.

"Starbuck!" Apollo snapped out.

"Sorry. What the frack, _sir_? You guys have been in space for a grand total of sixty years, and yet you have a better fighter control system than we do?" Starbuck just glared at them, as if to dare them to disprove what she had just said.

Roy just grinned, even as Lisa started to turn an interesting shade of red. "Yup, that's exactly it. And it has to do with this little device." He tapped a button so the screen switched to a display of a helmet. "This little bad boy is a mind reader. With it and the smart systems, you don't fly a Veritech, you live it!"

Disbelief was shown on all the pilots faces.

Lee couldn't keep the disbelief off of his face. "And it is twice as good as a Mark VII's computer enhanced system?"

"At least that much. Which is important, ladies and gentlemen, because your enemy doesn't have or make pilots. They make fighters with the pilot built right in," Lisa explained as she switched a slide to a diagram of Cylon fighter. "From the wreckage we've recovered, this is not a ship. It is a cybernetic organism specifically built and bred to fly."

"Frak me," Starbuck said softly.

"We have discovered a hyperdrive that is not only a half the size than the best you colonials have, but at least two magnitudes more accurate than yours, too."

Most of the pilots looked confused, but Lee frowned. "They are a hundred times more accurate? That means they could jump right from her directly to Caprica. That would take the Galactica at least ten jumps. And it's a capitol ship!"

"No, I'm saying their _fighter's_ hyperdrive is one hundred times more capable than any Colonial make. They are literally only one jump from their major staging ground or possibly their own home system," Lisa said solemnly.

"We can't outrun them..." Starbuck finally said softly.

Roy suddenly grinned. "So we're going to have to steal some of their tech, add in a healthy dose of your own and make the best damn fighters we can."

- - -

Location: Macross Training Base.

Rick Hunter grunted as he saw one of the Colonials walking across the exercise yard. It was that hotshot pilot 'Starbuck' and a three others that he didn't remember right off the top of his head. He grinned to himself, as he remembered Roy waxing poetic about the powerfully built blonde with her cocky attitude.

He winced as his training sergeant knocked him down for his inattentiveness and ordered him to do fifty push-ups while he was down there.

Rick fumed at the 'injustice' of his punishment, almost taking his mind off of Minmei. She had wanted to go back to being friends and then maybe see about if there was anything else between them.

Roy's absentminded advice to confront her had worked, even if it had just about broken his heart. So Rick had joined up with the Robotech Defense Force to distract himself from his pain and rejection.

- - -

Location: Outer space, near the Colonial Remnant Fleet.

"Baker-echo-lima-niner-delta is confirmed," Roy replied over his radio as he flipped a few switches on his control panel. "Drive is spun up."

"Roger, Skull One. You are coming up on jump point Alpha. The Unicorn is waiting you at Bravo," Lisa responded from the bridge of the Macross.

"Roger! Countdown started!" The CAG of the Macross flight wing glanced over the number rapidly counted down. "Jumping... now!" He had to physically tighten his neck muscles to not look over his shoulders at the 'Jump Pack' attached to his Veritech.

The torpedo looking attachment on the top of his fighter flashed red to gold and for one moment Roy ceased to exist. The next moment his friend or foe was resetting for his new location, a 'mere' ten light minutes out. Off his port side, the Unicorn repair and fleet tender for the Colonial Fleet loomed largely.

His radio crackled to life with a warm voice. "Well, that actually seemed to work. Nice to see you today, Skull One!"

"Nice to see you too, Unicorn! Looks like Lang and Gwentree's brainchild actually worked," the fighter pilot responded glibly. Now if they had only been able to fit it inside the fighter, instead of as an add-on attachment.

His collision alarm suddenly started to blare loudly, even as he twisted his controls into an instinctive dive and roll. "Shit!" he screamed out. "Unicorn! I have incoming Raiders jumping in! Get the hell out of here!"

"You need at least two minutes to recharge your jump drive!" the operator warned. The Unicorn was already moving, its CIW turrets laying out an impressive volume of anti-missile and anti-fighter support.

"I am aware of that! But you are a sitting duck for them right now!" he shouted. And if they made it back, Gloval would know that the project succeeded.

"Roger! Unicorn out!" The boxy ship was under fire already, explosive bullets hitting its light armor. It barely flashed out of existence mere moments before three missiles crossed its last location.

Roy frowned in concentration, even as he transformed to battleoid to shoot down six missiles fired at him. Now to survive long enough to make his own escape!

- - -

The Unicorn appeared almost in the middle of the fleet, lurching hard as it angled to avoid one of the mining ships! It immediately sounded the alert.

Admiral Adama narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "Sound condition one to the fleet. Prepare for jump as soon as the Macross lifts off from the kuipier planetoid."

Gaeta looked up from his communication console. "Pegasus says they are ready to jump to Point Bravo."

"Order them to stand at the defensive. I'm not risking the fleet for one fighter. How long until the Macross can lift off?" he asked.

Behind him, Tigh was ordering the ready fighters to launch.

"Captain Gloval says they can be back to the fleet in twenty minutes," Dee replied right next to Gaeta.

"Inform Commander Cain that he can ready to jump when the Macross arrives on station! Have him launch his fighters to cover for possible Raiders jumping in to attack the fleet." Adama narrowed his eyes as Apollo got his squadrons into a defensive formation, just like they planned earlier. With the Macross down mining water for two days, they had expected a possible attack. He hadn't thought they would try to ambush the Unicorn and Skull One on their crash test of the first Jump Drive packs. He did think it was an elegant solution to the Cylon's superiority having their own fighters become jump capable. Grentwe had been quite fulsome in her praise of the idea.

"Now we wait," he said softly. Minutes ticked off slowly. After ten minutes, he shared a hard look with Tigh. The chances of a single fighter surviving that long were not good.

Finally, at the thirteen-minute mark, a battered Skull One flashed into existence. A small whoop of joy erupted, even as Dee called out over the radio, "Skull One, report please!"

"Skull One to Galactica, I managed to survive while my drive recycled and then I jumped," Roy said with a grin.

Adama nodded to Dee and picked up a hand receiver. "Galactica Actual here, Skull One. You gave us a bit of fright. Did the new hardware take a long time charge up?"

"Not at all! Two minutes and I was out of there!" Roy replied with an arched eyebrow.

Adama pursed his lips. The damage must have played merry hell with the surface geometry of the fighter, causing it to jump out at relativistic speeds. They were lucky they were only ten light-minutes out. He shuddered to think of a fighter appearing from a two light-year jump where they were planning on rendezvousing with a fleet that might not even exist any more.

"Thank you, Skull One. You provided some very important testing information there. The Cylons attacking us may have just saved pilots lives," he said with a mean looking grin on his face.

"Really? Now this I've got to hear," the pilot replied.

- - -

Location: Colonial Stellar System 'Saris', near the Kuipier Belt.

A Cylon Basestar floated in the cold void, sensors attuned to nearby space and the oddly shaped ice asteroid. They had gone over the city on the surface. Even though critical information had been removed, certain things had not been found, such as the location of these new humans.

Space started to warp and gravity wavered within the area. A sea of lambent fire lit the cold and lonely area.

Then hundreds of gigantic leviathans spawned from the hyperspace fires. The Cylon Basestar coldly calculated the numbers, even as it detected dozens of ships turning towards it.

Long needle-like lasers were fired from dozens of ships, holing the Basestar and knocking one spur off of its spindly form. A second barrage finished off the ship before it could flee.

"All ships, prepare for a counter attack from the new ships," Breetai commanded to his great fleet. He cut off the transmission and turned to his diminutive advisor. "So, Exedore, has the finder beam locked onto Zor's ship yet?"

"Not yet, milord. There is a lot of distortion. And I am detecting dozens, if not hundreds of fold echoes. It appears they may have tried to lose us by performing many short jumps. We may have to split the fleet up to patrol the nearest stellar systems." The misshapen dwarf frowned in thought.

"Understood and well thought out, Exedore! The Micronian's will not escape with Zor's ship, no matter what!"

- - -

Location: Battlestar Galactica, Starboard landing deck.

Kara Thrace checked the unfamiliar flight suit she was wearing , a UN Spacey flight suit. There were several reasons why she was wearing this flightsuit and not a Colonial one. Life support connections and, of course , the original thinking cap. The helmet contained more than the thinking cap system. It also had sensors that tracked eye movement allowing for rapid and indirect target locks.

Next she, did a walk around inspection of the fighter she'd be flying a two seater Valkyire, the VF-1Ju. It was twice as long as a Viper, and a few tons heavier. She had read the specs and flew it the sim, but in her eyes it looked large and unwieldy.

But one thing she could not say it was under armed. Twelve missiles, a lasers turret and an auto cannon the size of a Viper' cockpit.

Standing next to the fighter was her instructor. He introduced himself. "Lieutenant, Thrace. I'm Major Todd Marshall. I'll be your instructor."

- - -

"Terrible just terrible. I thought you were supposed to be some hot shot space ace ," Marshall said as Starbuck failed to execute another maneuver.

"It's not my fault this junk heap is a frakkin slug," Starbuck nearly screamed. Losing her patience with the fighter and her 'Instructor' seemed next on her agenda.

"The problem isn't the plane. The problem is you're just not properly motivated ," Marshall said as he switched on his comms. "Macross you may commence training missile barrage."

'What.' was Starbuck's only thought then the HUD lit up and the cockpit was filled with the scream of the missile alarm.

Over the alarm Starbuck could hear much to her disgust a rather boastful Marshall saying, "Are we motivated yet!"

"You frakkin _MANIAC_!" Starbuck cried as she rammed the throttle foreword pulling a hard turn as she dropped chaff hoping to spoof the missiles.

"I hope they remembered to use training missiles this time?" Marshall muttered, in a slightly worried tone.

- - -

"No, no, no, Your still thinking of this bird as if she's a normal fighter," Marshall calmly pointed out despite being thrown around in his seat by Starbuck's wild flying.

"I don't see how changing my fighter into a giant frakkin robot will be frakkin helpful right frakkin _NOW_!"

"Let me show you," Marshall said as he flipped the override switch. Taking control of the figher he flipped the Valkyrie over changing into battleoid. The massive war machine turned to face the volley of incoming missiles. In the cockpit sensors in Marshall's helmet tracked his eye movements and locked on to the missiles. Then the Lasers on head lowered and the mecha brought up the massive gun-pod up and fired.

Starbuck, just watched in frustration as she was reduced to a passenger, Frustration turned into awe as Marshall proved to her the Valkyrie that it was anything but a slug. The Valkyrie deftly maneuvered as it evaded, while firing and destroying the training missiles at the same time.

"How did you do that?"

"What did you first think when you saw this plane?" Marshall asked calmly as he changed the Valkyrie back into fighter mode.

"What the hell does that have to do with anything!" Starbuck said annoyed that she wasn't getting a straight answer.

"Just answer the question."

"I was larger then my viper my first thought was, 'it's a slug'."

"Did it, handle the way you expected?" Marshall asked.

"Yes."

"And there's the problem, the problem isn't the fighter, it's you. The helmet on your head is more then just a fashion statement," Marshall explained. "Your brain is now part of the flight control systems."

"With all due respect sir, there's nothing wrong with my brain." Starbuck quickly replied. 'However there are a great many wrong with yours,' She thought darkly.

"Actually there is, your preconceptions. In your mind thought this plane would fly a certain way and it did. Same thing with some RDF pilots, their planes fly like they are still in an atmosphere. They are so used to flying through the air that expect their planes to…"

"Sorry to interrupt the lesson, Major," Lt. Grant said and her image appeared both Starbuck's and Marshall's comm displays. "But the Macross is abandoning mining operations."

"Heading back to the Galactica!" Starbuck responded.

- - -

Location: Seawraith, FT-011, conference room.

"Giaus, what are you going to do?" a drop-dead sexy voice purred in the scientist's ear.

Baltar tried not to jerk as he listened to 'Captain' Grentwe blather on the project she was assigning him. Currently, the other officers of the Sea Wraith and drafted scientists were going over the many technical and scientific problems facing the combined fleet.

"Baltar? Have you determined how the virus was introduced yet?" Grentwe's high and nasally voice intruded.

"With the lack of records... due to the loss of the colonies... I really don't know that anyone will ever be able to track down the infection vector." Baltar's eyes twitched slightly to where only he could see the sexy, blonde Cylon sitting very provocatively on a chair. "I'll keep working at it, of course."

"Oh, well done, Giaus. I'm sure they won't suspect a thing." The Six seemed quite smug at his dual reply.

The RDF scientist from the Macross stared at Baltar for just a second, but then shrugged and turned back to the discussion of the nuts and bolts of the Viper hyper-jump pack. The package was being integrated into a front-mounted "sled" that would allow the Vipers to still tube launch for fast reaction, just in case.

Other than the update on the Galactica's starboard landing pod's reactivation, most of the details of the meeting were quite mundane.

- - -

Location: Occupied Caprica, Colonial Fleet Command.

"So the great hero of the Cylon's is only a touch worried about these unknown ships that appeared? I thought you were a cold-blooded machine, incapable of such esoteric human emotions," a snobbish voice said from behind Six's view.

The other Cylon's ignored the phantasm, as only this Six could see Giaus Baltar in his impeccably tailored outfit.

"Other than the... loss of the one Basestar... what are our options for dealing with these giant green alien ships?" Six asked, he eyes darting to the side where Giaus was sitting on a couch in the lounge.

The Negroid Cylon frowned. "We will need more information. I think our best option is to capture one of these ships with assault shuttles. If we can take over their computers, all the better."

Several Cylons nodded. The intervention of the strange ships and their extreme long-range firepower made them quite deadly. But the Cylons would use their own talents to best effect.

An Eight spoke up, here chocolate eyes narrowing in thought. "So we just need to decide on the approach to the Colonial 'Helo' and infiltrating the Macross. None of our units within the fleet have been permanently assigned to that ship, even as guests."

"I believe that the 13th unit infiltration program should be reactivated with all haste and inserted covertly during another assault shuttle on the ship itself. They would expect us to try and take out their most dangerous ship in just that manner," the scientifically minded Cylon advised. His cold eyes gleamed, as he was the Cylon tasked with biologic research and this was what he served their God.

"How long?" the Eight asked curiously.

"I have the prototype ready now," he responded.

"Then get it to the fleet following the Refugee Fleet so that they can launch an attack as quickly as possible," another Six said haughtily.

"By your command," a Two replied with a cold smile.

- - -

Location: Zentraedi Fleet.

The Heavy Raiders appeared only three kilometers from the large green ships that were spread out in a basic triangle formation, their fighter brethren Raiders behind them leading a 'space-swarm' to distract the capital vessels from the raider.

The Cylon drones targeted a fighter hatch and fired missiles to blast their way in. The Heavy Raiders were in to the shattered wreckage of the landing bay within moments. The landing ramp dropped down, allowing the humanoid robots to clank down.

Behind the Heavy Raiders, a partition closed off the blasted hatch, sealing the ship back up. Suddenly, large hatches opened up admitting Zentraedi warrior into the room.

The drones instantly realized they had made a drastic mistake as fifty-five foot tall giants came through the door at a run, artillery-sized rifles at their shoulders. The giants ignored the human-sized robots (if they didn't just step on them) and started firing into the Heavy Raiders at ludicrously short range.

From start to finish, the assault had lasted two minutes and forty-five seconds.

- - -

Location: Colonial Fleet Remnant.

Even as that assault was under way, Vipers were launching to intercept a wave of six hundred Raiders that were jumping into the fleet in anchorage above the dwarf, ice planet.

"Frak me!" Starbuck yelled as she barely swerved to avoid a Raider. Her Viper was jinking and dodging like it was only too aware of the Raiders that were trying to destroy her. She grinned as her Viper Mark VIIu reached all new levels of performance, as the Raiders in front of her were learning all to quickly. The thinking cap was definitely an easy addition to the avionics of her fighter.

"Can the chatter!" Apollo ordered. He swerved his own Mark VIIu and waxed a Raider with his rail rounds in short order. "Killjoy, watch your six!"

"Vampire! Vampire! Inbound nukes!" Low Down shouted as he spotted missiles. "They are inbound towards the Macross and civilian ships!"

"Ignore the fighters! Hit those nukes!"

Over the com system, a no-nonsense female voice interrupted, "Vipers, Macross will be firing our anti-missile cover! Switch to heading four-ten-bravo to avoid friendly fire!" Lisa Hayes switched off the channel as she switched to the internal channel while watching her screens. "All destroids, fire!" she shouted into the com. Hopefully her planning would save the Macross today.

On the surface of the ship varieties of destroids unleashed lasers, machine guns and missiles in a storm of fire that the Cylon just could not fully dodge nor weather. Raider after Raider exploded as they came under the most intense anti-fighter doctrine that Lisa Hayes mind could develop.

It worked perfectly, stopping the missiles and fighters exactly as she planned. And also as the Cylons had expected, as those hundreds of fighters and missiles were just a diversion.

Heavy Raiders launched short-range armor piercing missiles to breach the forward hold just before they slammed into the armor. The Macross sealed the venting wounds quickly. Four Heavy Raiders survived the punishing landing to disgorge platoons of chrome robots with glaring mono-eyes. All of their arms switched to machine guns as they charged for the nearest doors.

And behind them, four unique Cylons extended their tentacle like limbs and started to climb up into the environmental systems. Nestled inside them was a miniature surgery equipped with the 13th Infiltration Model floating in ammonic fluid.

Ready to be surgically inserted into an unsuspecting human!

- - -

Lethal, cold and menacing with their flashing mono-eyes wavering back and forth the Cylons ran into their first resistance when they opened a doorway and RDF soldiers opened fire with their sub-machine guns.

Bullets flashed and bounced off their chrome exteriors with barely a mar. Cylon forearms reconfigured into machine guns with advanced high-velocity, armor-piercing ammunition. The door closed behind the advancing machines with a thump as they mowed down the humans that were starting to scream in panic.

- - -

The screams of civilians as the air raid sirens sounded filled the air. Minmei turned to her family. "Come on, Auntie! We need to get to the shelters!"

Her uncle grabbed the youngest member of their family and slung him under his arm. "Come on! We don't want to be locked out!" Jason, of course, immediately started screaming in protest.

The four of them started to move towards the nearby shelter. Minmei tripped up against the side of the alleyway as her family moved along. "My heel!" she complained. Her family really didn't have the RDF living credits to afford another set of shoes for herself. She kneeled down to retrieve the broken off high heel when the utility access hatch in the ground below her suddenly opened. Segmented, metallic tendrils lashed out viper-quick before she could even blink.

"MOM! Minmei was eaten by a monster!" Jason wailed.

"Not right now, Jason!"

"MOM!"

"Do you want to be grounded for life?"

- - -

Minmei lay facedown on the cold metal of the duct-way, consciousness fading as the Cylon infiltrator removed its anesthetic laden needle. Micromanipulators unbuttoned the back of her dress and exposed her upper back and neck. Laser sharpened miniature scalpels made a one-quarter inch cut and then stretched the wound wide.

The Cylon watched from its many camera-eyes at the end of its surgical implements. With machine-precision it cut deeper into her flesh just below her neck, as a snake would burrow through the ground.

The armored, spider-like body split in half revealing the small infiltrator unit floating in the clear nutrient solution. It squirmed with its many wiry neural receptors as it was gently inserted into the young girls flesh and wrapped around the upper spinal column and into small holes drilled through her skull. Nano-filaments invaded all of her motor controls.

And then her eyes opened.

- - -

The Cylon distraction force moved deeper into the ships. The computer systems they had found were a bizarre mixture of technologies. Simple binary scalar microprocessors and utterly unknown eight-way paralogical semi-organic systems. Usually one on top of another, like a master system. The binary systems were actually limiting the octal systems.

The lead Cylon lead them into what appeared to be a quaint outdoor simulation area of a city. No humans were visible. They had only proceeded about thirty feet when suddenly one of the blocky structures rotated and then stomped forward.

"Hey, kid?" Sgt. McNamara drawled. "Try not to miss them and mess up the White Dragon. I'd really like some of their dumplings later on!" His Raider-X opened up with all of its machine guns, ripping through a quarter of the Cylons instantly.

Rick Hunter snickered. "Yes sir!" Even though he was only a trainee, his Sergeant had decided that a little 'real' life combat experience in a destroid had been called on, as all of the regular pilots were outside fighting off the Cylon Raiders. He moved his standard 'brawler' destroid and stomped on three Cylons that didn't move fast enough. The fists of the destroid crushed another pair, while the last six tried to retreat down a side street.

McNamara leaned his Raider-X half way around the corner and finished them off before they could exit the alleyway.

"Shit. That wasn't worth bringing both of us out here," he groused. "Back to the barn."

- - -

Mimei shivered in her bed, eyes wide open as she stared blankly at the wall. Within her mind she looked at herself with fearful eyes. The other her just had a sultry, vicious smile.

Hello, Minmei. You can call me Thirteen. Let's see what memories you have here that might be useful, hmm?

- - -

"Stand down to condition two," Admiral Adama ordered. They had just finished several hyper-jumps in a row to leave the ice mine behind.

Lt. Geata nodded in the background, even as he picked up his head phone to announce the order across the ship.

Willaim turned back towards Dee. "I want all ships verified and accounted for."

"Yes, sir!"

- - -

Location: SDF-1 Macross, training base the next day.

"Rick!" Roy called out as he walked into the Canteen on the 'training base.'

"Hey, Roy!" the young pilot called out tiredly. All of his squadmates looked between the two. So the rumors that the kid had an inside track were true. "Whatcha doing?"

"Just escorting our visitors over for some grub. More cross-training on our equipment," the Macross's CAG explained. He gestured to the dozen or so Colonial pilots. "These greenhorns need more training on our systems. They seem to have a problem thinking with their fighters instead of against them."

"You are cruising for a bruising, Sparky!" Starbuck sniped back. A sunny, lazy smile stole most of the harsh edge of her snappy comeback.

"Sparky... I like that," Apollo muttered. The serious looking CAG of the Galactica suddenly grinned at his old friend. "Sparky it is!"

"What! No way!" Roy complained, though it was mostly for effect. Sparky was much better than everything else they had thought up so far.

"Sparky! Why Roy, I never knew you were so energetic!" Rick drawled back and a devilish smile. "Besides, you don't pick your handle, remember?"

"Yeah, whatever. So, Rick? They have you in the simulator again?" Roy 'Sparky' Fokker asked.

"No, it's actually our one rest day this week. I was thinking about heading into the city to buy some things and just be off base," Rick replied with a shrug. His wild mane of dark hair looked huge compared to the close-cropped hair of the colonials.

'Sparky' just shook his head in mock exasperation. "Slackers!"

- - -

Rick whistled as he walked down the sidewalk. He was going to be meeting some of the other trainee pilots in an hour for some burgers. He tugged fitfully at his uniform.

"Rick!" a voice called out from behind. Minmei waved from across the street. Several expressions went across her face, to fast to follow. "I, um, just wanted to say I'm sorry."

The pilot looked confused. "I thought we went over this? You didn't want a steady boyfriend."

"Well... we don't really know each other that well. And being boyfriend-girlfriend is such a big step. I do like you, but you were wanting more than I could handle," she said in an almost perfect young school girl manner.

The real Minmei asked aloud, from behind Rick where she appeared in Thirteen's vision, "Why? Why are you doing this?"

"I've never had a boyfriend before and then we got lost inside the Macross. It was just so overwhelming. I thought we were going to die." The young girl smiled wistfully. "I didn't want to die without having loved. But things are- It's not the same out here with everyone else."

"Quit telling him my heart's secrets!" Minmei shouted to Thirteen. "What gives you the right?"

"I know, that's why I thought we broke it off," Rick pointed out, as he could not hear the virtual Minmei, and misinterpreted Thirteen's flinching.

"I was scared! Fine, I said it!" Minmei cried out theatrically. "You probably hate me now!" She turned as if she were about to leave.

"I don't hate you, Minmei. I don't think I could ever do that," he said intently.

"Oh, Rick," Minmei said softly. This horrible thing was going to use him to get to the military. She started to cry softly.

"Rick..." Thirteen started to say, then stopped. She looked up with uncertain eyes, glimmering with unshed tears. "We can still be friends, right?"

"Sure. It wasn't really fair of me to push you... It's just... I get so jealous of all the guys hitting on you." He shrugged.

"I don't think you could be human if you weren't," Thirteen said.

"Do you mind if I drop by later?" Rick asked as he shoved his hands into his pockets.

"No, not at all!" Thirteen gave him a large smile.

"So in a couple of hours! After I've met up with some guys from training," Rick explained. He waved and walked off, looking a bit confused.

Minmei shouted angrily, "How can you do this! He doesn't deserve to be used like this!"

Thirteen shook her head. "Are all humans as emotionally unstable as you two?"

"What do you mean?" the girl retorted and she folded her arms across her chest huffily. Her eyebrows scrunched up in thought. Was she feeling confused... or feeling Thirteen being confused?

"I know you like him and that he hurt you, Minmei. I'm just not letting him get away," Thirteen said softly as she started to walk back to the White Dragon.

"I hate you!" Minmei shouted.

- - -

Location: Battlestar Galactica BSG-078.

Colonel Tigh snapped a salute to Admiral Adama as he entered the Admiral's wardroom. "I've got that progress report on the starboard landing bay." He handed the paperwork.

"Ate east. The crew from the Unicorn and Sea Wraith are really doing a great job then." William went over the papers quickly. "Even better than expected. Now if only we could replace all that launching tube equipment."

"Its more than just the accelerators in the tubes, Will. We just don't have the functional power-plants to adequately power both port and starboard launchers without a major refit. And that would take months," his second in command stated.

"We need that bay fully functional, Saul. We can't hit back against the Cylons at only three-quarters effectiveness." Adama took off his glasses for a second as he looked across his room. "We may have set up that bay for ground-style launching."

"We might as well see about getting some of those robot-fighters that the Macross uses then," Tigh said as he rolled his eyes.

The admiral chewed his lip for a second. "I've been thinking of doing that. While they are too big and too different to replace our Vipers for a space superiority fighter, the Veritechs would be a strategic strike force to hit planetary ground targets and occupy them. We could take the fight back to the Colonies."

"I thought we were running?"

"Where? We left millions behind. They can't all be dead. We are consigning them to oblivion if we just run!" Adama said.

"Have you discussed this with the President yet?" Tigh asked cautiously.

"I want a good plan of action before I propose this to the President."

- - -

BSG-078 Galactica: Two hours later

Garris Cain stormed down the corridors of the Galactica, with grim determination. He was on a mission. A mission to tell his friend , a superior officer, that he is wrong and his plans is a mistake.

He stopped at the hatch to Adama's quarters and took a deep breath in preparation. H e wasn't looking forward to this at all. Cain could go over Adama's head straight to the president. But he wouldn't humiliate Will in that way, he'd give him a chance to explain. And he had always hated officers that used politics to further themselves.

Pausing, Cain took a couple of deep breath to compose himself and he knocked on the hatch.

Admiral Adama looked up from the paper work that all but taken over his desk when he heard the knock. "Enter."

The hatch opened and Cain entered, closing the hatch behind him. Adama stood to greet his old friend but stopped when he saw the look on Cain's face and instantly knew that this conversation was going to bad.

"Care to explain this, Sir?" Cain said as he handed him a sheet of paper.

Adama looked down at the paper. It was his orders, ordering Cain to draft up plans for the retaking and removal of Cylon forces from the Colonies.

"Will, this is crazy! Even if we do defeat the Cylons, we gain nothing! " Cain went on, not giving Adama chance to speak. "We don't have any to go back to. Will, the colonies are irradiated, toxic anyone that goes on those planets needs large douses of Anti-radiation meds. That's fine for the short term, but the amount and how frequently we'll be taking them pretty soon a lot of people will be developing resistance to those drugs."

Adama just sat down. And wondered if he'd get in a word in.

"And all civilian and military orbital stations were hit so, that means we have no where else to go."

"Are you done?" Adama asked, calmly.

"What the hell are you planning!" Cain asked

"I was planning to test you," Adama admitted. 'And this isn't what I'd expected.' William Adama thought. He'd expected Garris to be gung ho about retaking the colonies. 'Is he afraid? No, he wasn't.

"What!" Cain exclaimed. Now anger, clearly showing.

"I'm sorry for the deception. Commander," Adama said as he stood.

"With all due respect, Admiral what in the hells is going on?" Cain asked not hiding his frustration.

"Cain, you've always been..."

"Hot-headed," Cain supplied.

"To say the least." Adama said. "What changed?"

Cain sighed as he took a seat across from Adama. "Two hours of sitting helpless in Pegasus's CIC, watching as the fleet was destroyed."

Adama looked, at Cain long and hard before speaking. "Garris, I'm not crazy but I'm not going to abandon those survivors on the colonies."

"And you wanted to ensure that I wasn't going to try to turn a 'bug out' into glory seeking?" Cain asked, his anger simmering .

Adama nodded. "Garris, I need your help. I want to take a plan to the President but first I need your tactical wizardry."

Cain thought about it, Adama had always been a realist but. "What do you need Admiral?" Cain asked.

- - -

The Raptor landed on the deck with little fuss. With a hiss, the door opened and admitted Captain Gloval and Commander Hayes. Their security detail snapped a salute.

"This way, Sir!" the Colonial Marine snapped out.

Gloval nodded, but took a moment to look out on the Galactica's main flight deck. It was a hornet's nest of activity. "Hmm..." he said to himself.

Lisa just nodded to herself. It sounded like today was going to be interesting for the Fleet planning meeting.

- - -

On the screen behind Admiral Adama, a picture of the planet Caprica was showing. "Ladies and gentlemen. Let's get started." He gestured everyone to take his or her seats. The three other ship's captains of the Colonial Fleet and their second in command sat on the one side of the table while the Macross's Captain and second took the other. "The Colonial Fleet is preparing for long range strikes to acquire necessary supplies and hopefully rescue survivors back at the Colonies."

Gloval nodded. That would make sense. Then he frowned. "We are already stretched tight on living space, Admiral."

"We'll have to find room." Adama took his glasses off tiredly. "While I hope and expect to recover survivors, I am enough of a realist that there will not be many that we can feasibly get to."

"The nuked the Colonies. Most major cities had ninety percent fatalities from the first strike," Cain explained tiredly. "Our plan is to jump back strategically back to the fleet and reconnoiter. Our plans will have to be flexible."

Lt. Commander Fila Terris of the Sea Wraith pursed her lips. "And both Battlestars used? That leaves us exposed for defeat in detail."

Adama frowned at her. "You have a better suggestion?"

The captain of the Unicorn snorted. At that, Garris raised an eyebrow. "Lt. Commander Freemont? You have something to add?"

Alan Freemont sized up the room for a second, then shrugged. "I would surmise that Lt. Commander Terris feels that she has the tactical expertise to plan this operation."

"Continue," Admiral Adama said slowly.

Freemont's expression turned a bit sour. "She does hold the current record in tactics at the academy. Right now."

Terris's own expression was quite bland, even as Adama nodded. The admiral spoke up in a dry tone, "Lt. Commander Freemont, thank you for bringing up that information to my attention. Lt. Commander Terris, I am assigning you as an aide to Commander Cain for any tactical insights, and training, that he may foresee."

The tension was shattered by Captain Gloval's booming laugh. "I see that military politics has not changed," he said with a modicum of dark humor.

Adama just nodded, even as he noted Lt. Commander Lisa Hayes' own mortified expression. "Be that as it may, I have an oath to the colonies that states I must protect it and the citizens therein. And I plan to move heaven and hell to do so."

Garris stood up and started to pace. "We are currently only about eight standard jumps distant from the Colonial Home System. Of the twelve colonies, Caprica and Gemini are at close transition to the other planetary colonies of Picon, Scorpio and Aquaria."

"These were all fully habitable planets? On Earth, we have billions of people and only one other planet that we've successfully colonized," Lisa Hayes interjected.

Colonel Richards goggled at that. "Billions? We barely had that on our twelve colonies within the system!"

"System? Perhaps a bit of astrography would help us. Twelve colonies doesn't explain where and what too well!" Gloval said gruffily.

Terris looked over at Adama while raising her eyebrow and asked, "If I may?"

"Go ahead," the old man replied.

"The colonies were discovered in a trinary star system three thousand years ago. With six fully habitable planets and several resource colonies were quite viable to colonize from Kobol." The commander of the Seawraith scrubbed her short hair vigorously for a second, gathering her thoughts. "This is part history and part legend. Several of the colonies backslid to pre-space technologies at times. Only Caprica managed to be space-fairing during the entire time and leadership in technology and politics."

"Kobol? And where does Earth fit into this?" Gloval asked, genuinely curious.

Adama took over suddenly, speaking gravely, "Kobol is humanity's home. The original home world. Earth was the lost, 13th colony."

"Our universe must be very different then," Lisa explained. "From our own records and fossils, Earth is humanity's home. We can trace parts of our history back over ten thousand years."

- - -

Location: Seawraith FT-011, landing bay.

Dr. Cottle sucked on his cigarette, finishing it off. He crushed its end and tossed it in a receptacle as the door of the Raptor opened into the cramped landing bay of the Sea Wraith.

Lt. Commander Fila Terris and her XO were waiting at the bottom of the ramp. She snapped a salute and then quite studiously ignored Cottle's sloppy return. "Dr. Cottle. This way please." She nodded to her XO, sending him back off to the bridge.

After about five minutes walk, they ended up in front of a heavily fortified door with six guards in front of it.

"Protecting the Colonial Treasury in there?" the doctor remarked sarcastically.

Fila looked sidewise at him for a second. "Hardly. Corporeal Uhrams, if you could handle the search so we can proceed?"

The security detachment quickly vetted them, finding nothing unusual on them. Coded pass phrases were sent through the wired com system and the door opened. Terris led Cottle into the small room and the outer door sealed. After a few minutes, the inner door unlocked.

"I'd say you are taking your security seriously at least," the doctor drawled.

"Deadly serious, Doctor."

"Dr. Cottle! I'm glad you could make it!" Dr. Grentwe said as she waved off the three guards after the inner door. She only looked slightly discomfited by her neck brace. "Lt. Commander. Thank you for escorting the doctor here."

"I do have to leave. Do you have any dispatches for Galactica or Pegasus?" the officer asked. At Grentwe's shaken head, she closed the inner door.

"That overgrown airlock your idea or hers?" Dr. Cottle asked in genuine curiosity. He reached for his pack of cigarettes.

"Her idea, but it was vetted by myself. The best we can do until we can determine how to detect these new human-form Cylons." The older woman shrugged. She led him deeper into the area, opening another sealed door. "Morgue with the Cylon spy's body on the left and the Cage on the right."

"Cage? I thought we were treating our captives humanely?" Cottle asked, bristling.

"What? Oh! It's an EM cage. Can't have our spy transmitting back. At least until we figure out how they do it," she replied brusquely as his comment sank in. She opened the door on the right, showing a double mesh of fencing covering a set of bars. While the prison cell was not large, it was enough for the blonde to move around in. "And here she is, the star of Cell Block Omega. Captain Gina Jones, call-sign Artemis. Unfortunately, she's reverted to infiltration mode and can barely understand that she tried to kill me."

Cottle stared for a long moment. "They sure make Cylons pretty these days, anyways," he said dryly.

"Yes. Probably on purpose. Her Fleet records show that she was caught in compromising situations with a more senior officer at least once and reprimanded."

"And hello to you too!" Gina called out.

"The subject has attempted to socially bond with myself and Dr. Lors. I have ordered her to be ignored except during interrogation," the scientist explained. She fussily pulled a strand of her gray hair back into her tight bun.

"_FRAK YOU TOO!"_ Gina hollered out.

"Those bandages are from her interrogations?" Cottle asked, his face going stony.

"Not at all, Doctor. Those are from our acquiring tissue samples. You will be assisting Dr. Lors in the upcoming surgery today. We need small samples of non-necroized liver and brain tissue. Those will require both of your expertise to succeed at without inflicting fatal injuries."

Cottle looked shocked. "And if we happen to maim or kill her?"

"I'll feel very sorry and authorize an autopsy. I have little sympathy for xenocidal murderers. Especially when they tried to kill me personally," she retorted frostily. She turned and led him out of the cage room and into the main laboratory.

"Ah, Dr. Grewntwe-" Giaus Baltar said as he walked over.

"Dr. Baltar, have you finished with the interface program and the RDF thinking cap?" she said, brusquely cutting him off.

"Well, for a Alpha program, yes. I was wondering," Giaus said, his eyes twitching to the left and flinching slightly, "why you wanted to integrate the VR goggles and hacking tools into the system."

"You'll have to pardon Dr. Baltar, he's been a bit unsteady since he escaped Caprica," Grentwe said with a low whisper. Back to Baltar, she nodded. "I think that being able to interface with our computer systems to stem hacking attempts from the Cylons is a laudable goal. I do not think that it is impossible, unlike some of my ex-colleagues. This is my office. Dr. Lors office is over there," she said as she gestured to their left. "Dr. Baltar office that he shares with Mr. Kline and the other programmers is to the right."

Cottle blinked as he entered her very tidy but full office from the main laboratory area. "Is that radioactive?" he asked, pointing at a cylinder container that was leaking light from its cracked lid.

"No, that's something that I've been studying from the Macross. They actually use some sort of exotic fuel that they can siphon from the main engines for all their fighters. It's quite intriguing. I might be able to synthesize a hybrid fuel of the culture and Tylinium. It's looking quite promising."

Cottle blanched. Tylinium was dangerously reactive. This maniac was wanting the mix it with an unknown and alien fuel source? "Sure," he managed to get out.

- - -

Location: Battlestar Galactica BSG-078, Remnant Fleet.

Lt. Kara Thrace saluted as she walked into the Old Man's room. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Sit." William Adama waited for her to take her seat properly. "I have a new assignment. I commissioning you to brevet Captain, pending how you work out."

Starbuck managed to hide her shock at her promotion, even though she heard the words that she could lose it too. "Yes, sir."

"The starboard deck is mostly functional for landing now. But we can't feasibly use the launch tubes. We barely have the port ones working consistently. Due to that and other planning considerations, we will be assigning a new wing to it... headed up by you." Adama gave her a hard look. "I want you to train a group of pilots to use the VF-1Au that we are getting on trade from the Macross. We had to trade them forty Mark VIIu's in a technology transfer, but we should all come out good on this."

"I don't think I'm qualified to train our pilots on an unfamiliar fighters, sir." Kara was sweating bullets now.

"Major Todd of the RDF will be assigned to the Galactica to finish your crash course. There's only one way to become familiar with a new fighter, after all. Dismissed." He leaned back in his chair as she stood. "Oh, and Starbuck? I'd like you to brush up on your ground fighting tactics with the Marines."

She just nodded, then realize as she stepped out what it all meant.

They were going back!

- - -

_Chief, I want you to put a pyrotechnic charge inside the simulators,"_

_Lt. Marshall ordered._

_"Sir?" The look on Chief Tyrol's face said it all._

_"Just enough for a flash. I just want to reinforce the fact that this isn't_

_a video game."_

_The look on the Chief's face changed into a smile. "I think I can come up with something._

- - -

There was a Loud WAH THUMP as the simulator shook and moved a couple of millimeters, all was fine with the unit's actual function..

Expect the simulator wasn't supposed to move.

"Chief what did you use?" Marshall asked from the front of the classroom.

"A flash bang grenade that a was kindly donated by a Marine."

- - -

Kara blinked the spots out of her eyes. That Maniac!

- - -

Major Todd Marshal stared at the small group of Colonial pilots in the debriefing room. "This is the VF-1Ju, a joint development between the RDF and your Colonials. Essentially, our standard multi-purpose fighter, the Variable Fighter's only weakness was its low thrust and fuel limitation. With Tylinium based engines, it should now be capable of breaking to a free orbit on a standard one gravity world."

_"Yeah, but our Vipers have been able to do that for over sixty years," a smart-mouthed pilot named Digger snapped out._

_"Can your viper become a ground assault vehicle able to go building to building in an urban conflict? Or a ground-effect vehicle for canyon patrols?" Marshall replied calmly. "Your Vipers are very nice aero-space superiority fighters. Even non-reconfigurable, they are amazingly fast and responsive with dummy hard-wire controls. With a thinking cap and Robotechnology, they will be twice the fighter. You Mark IIIs will equal Mark VIIs without upgrades. And what a Mark VII can do after it's been upgraded is nothing short of phenomenal." He suddenly slammed his hands down on the podium. "And you shit-heads are going to need every single god-damned trick in the book. You!" he shouted, pointing at a young woman that had just transferred from the Pegasus._

_"Sir?" Amber 'Seeker' Spence managed to get out, suddenly finding herself under the gun._

_"How would you plan an assault on a major metropolitan city with a Battlestar?" he snapped out._

_Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace smiled to herself. She could see where this was going._

_"Well, I'd start with an orbital bombardment to take out their ground anti-aircraft missiles and follow up with Vipers to finish that off. Then land troops in our Raptors," she replied._

_"Well, I'm glad you aren't in charge of any assault that we'll be in," the RDF major replied snidely. "What would you say to that plan with your new babies doing this," he said as he switched on a picture to the screen behind him that showed a VF-1 in Battloid mode ducking behind a building like some sort of over-sized military gunman. "The VF-1 was designed for street to street fighting and has a gun that can rip tanks apart quit easily. With its speed, it can strike deeply behind enemy lines."_

_"But we aren't planning an assault!"_

_Maniac just chortled. "Oh, right. Of course we aren't."_

- - -

Starbuck grimaced. This flash-bang must have been Maniac's idea. And with that grin she saw on Chief Tyrol's face, she had blundered right into their little 'trap.' Damn them. She blindly jinked her controls, rapidly sending the virtual VF-1J into Battloid mode. All she could see were spots.

"Come on, come on! Don't die," she whispered to herself. She would never be able to live down being the first pilot shot down in less than thirty seconds in the simulator.

- - -

_Chief Tyrol looked over the new fighters that were being wheeled into the starboard landing bay. He looked at the large fighters with their wings folded down and back. "These are the new birds?" he asked Cally._

_The short, dark-haired woman just shrugged. "They sure look complicated. Every wing on this thing has major moving parts on top of the maneuvering fins," she noted. "Lots of weapon mounts though."_

_"Chief Tyrol? I'm Petty Officer Mercedes. I'm here to get you guys up to spec on maintenance on these babies. We've got a small glitch with these Maclean Industry engines of yours, but we should be able to iron those out no problemo!" the short and spastic fellow in the RDF flight-crew uniform gave Tyrol a sloppy salute and was starting to open panels._

_"Ah, PO Mercedes? Perhaps we out to start with the briefing and then paperwork?" Tyrol said as he shared a quick, incredulous look with Cally._

_"Oh. Right. Sorry, I got ahead of myself." He chuckled nervously._

_Tyrol turned him towards the supply room, which doubled as his office. "So, let me guess? They just promoted you to Petty Officer and shipped you over here?"_

_"That obvious?" Mercedes asked in a quavering voice._

_"Screaming," Cally replied cheerfully. 'So why are the verniers so far back on nose? That really limits the turn radius in space. And I didn't even see any on the wing-outs either._

_"Um, I guess it's because they are supposed to shift to battloid or guardian mode, using the major engines."_

_"Doesn't that limit your ability to bug out while under fire?" Tyrol asked._

_Mercedes just shook his head. "I bet Dr. Lang didn't ask any of you guys on the flight crew over here to help on these upgrades, did he?"_

_"Well, you know what that means," Cally griped as she stared at the ceiling in frustration._

_"We get to fix their wonderful design when they send out an notice. How about we actually head them off at the pass. I've got a friend on Dr. Lang's team," the RDF technician said._

_"Lad, that sounds wonderful."_

- - -

"Dammit-dammit-dammit-dammit," Kara muttered to herself. This thing was supposed to be so smart, how come it wasn't reading her mind about avoiding the attackers? She grit her teeth furiously and reached out as hard as possible with her mind. She thought she saw a flicker of movement to the left and furiously jinked up and then to the right to avoid the Raider that was trying to perforate her ship.

"-see gentlemen, these aren't toys-?" Maniac cut himself off as he saw something rather remarkable. Starbuck was still active in the simulator, dodging three Raiders as they tried to kill her. The head-mounted laser swiveled and turned, taking out their incoming missiles even as she shifted to battloid and swung the main cannon and blew away two of the attackers. "What the hell?"

Flickers of curved metal seemed to impinge on her spotty vision. Starbuck turned her head quickly to the left and down, her mecha mimicking her movements. "Got ya, you frackers!"

Her Friend-Foe alarm signaled the next wave of raiders. She fumbled the "G" switch, wondering why she could see the Raiders so visibly through the cockpit, but couldn't see the controls through the spots. She jammed the stick into the corner while jinking her foot thrusters in two directions, sending her into a controlled spin while gunning down the lead Cylon. For another three minutes, she fought her 'damaged' fighter into the kill spots on the other two, finally finishing them off.

"Well, Starbuck, I'm rather impressed. Seems like you got over your hang-ups on the thinking cap. Crash Down? Hit the release," Marshall said as he turned back to some of the other pilots to continue his critique. "Now she lost control for at least-"

FWRASSSHHT! Went the seals as smoke was sent billowing up out of the sealed cockpit, sending the two nearest trainees staggering. Fire-control alarms kicked in and sprayed fire-control gas into the room as everyone started to run around and put out the fire.

"Maniac! What sort of lame-brained stunt was that?" Starbuck yelled out. She stood up and knocked her helmeted head on the canopy. "Turn on the frakking lights!" she roared out. Her flight suit was scorched and meleted at points.

"Um? Captain? The lights are on," Julie 'Juniper' Areil said, looking at her CO in confusion.

Starbuck took off her helmet and glared around impotently. "Maniac!"

"I'm right here-" he said, which was just enough to let Starbuck know where he was in relation to her.

Luckily, being blind she only managed to knock out two teeth on the first punch. But that was mostly because Maniac hadn't heard how volatile Starbuck could be.

- - -

"I'm sorry I am late, but I had to handle a dispute," Admiral Adama said as he walked into the tactical planning room. "Garris, Fila," he said as he nodded, indicating it was to be less formal. "Captain Gloval."

"Call me Henry," the RDF captain said with a smile under his bristling mustache. "Admiral, I seem to be noting a certain lack within the plans for using the Macross."

Commander Fila Terris nodded. "That's because we could not impose upon you to fight our war."

"Nonsense. The Macross has several abilities that you are lacking, most notably a real mechanized ground-force and land-assault capability. You are setting yourself up to fail if you don't use our ability to land. It is the least we can do after all the help you have already given us." He adjusted his billed cap until you could see only one eye. "Besides, we either hang together... or hang together in the gallows," he said with grim humor.

Garris shared a look with William, even as Fila looked Henry in the eye across the wide table with planets and mock ups of ships and fighters. Fila finally broke the silence. "I said we should have done it."

"Who will protect the fleet?" Colonel Richards asked, looking to his CO of the Pegasus.

"Space is big. We can set up several meet points or even hide them in the rings of Etru in the Colonial system," Adama finally said softly.

"We've been putting limited weapons on a few of the ships. And the Sea Wraith and Unicorn aren't front line combat ships," Commander Fila Terris said with conviction. "We can at least hold off Raiders for an hour."

"I thought you wanted to be in on the rescue?" Richards retorted snidely.

"I'll do my duty. Nothing less," she said flatly while confronting them all with a glare.

Henry Gloval turned to William Adama. "Are you sure she isn't Russian?"

He had to just smile at that.

- - -

Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace scowled from where she sat in the infirmary at a blur off in the distance. "What do you mean, I'm grounded?"

"Well, considering I'm over here, I think that's a good reason to ground you," Dr. Cottle said snidely. "The damage is temporary. Wear shades and rest for the next week and you'll be fine."

"But I've got a new squadron to train!" she complained, even as she turned her voice towards the doctor. The acrid stench of his cheap tobacco filled her nose. She had never understood what sort of doctor smoked in a hospital where there were possible open lines of oxygen around.

"Just don't strain your eyes. That flashbang didn't hurt your brain." Cottle returned a moment later. "Even though you can see blurs, use this cane so you don't fall down some maintenance shaft. The engineering staff doesn't need to clean up your body."

"I'm not some cripple!" she retorted.

"Until your eyes recover, you are. Deal with it and don't come crying back to me if you get hurt because you think your super-human."

- - -

Rick sighed as his VF-1Ju landed on the Prometheus. Space-suited figures directed him to elevator two. As soon as he was back in the pressurized hanger of the ship, he popped his canopy.

"Well, Captain?" Rick asked his flight instructor.

"You're cleared and passed flight school, kid!" He turned to all ten pilots. "You are all given leave for the weekend. Just don't go AWOL on your first official leave. Be back in time to receive your assignments!"

Rick ran with the rest of his training squadron back to the barracks. He cleaned up and put on his dress uniform and headed into town. He walked into the White Dragon to see Max sitting behind his counter while serving an early crowd. He seemed pretty happy. "Hey, Max! Is Minmei around?"

"She's out right now, actually. She's at the library looking up beauty tips for that pageant the mayor is cooking up," Max replied. "I guess she thinks all of her glamour magazines are too dated or something." He snorted in humorous contempt. At least she was worried about her becoming a model or actress again.

"That's down around the corner on Liahu Lane, right?" Rick asked as he opened the door. At Max's nod, he just waved and headed down the road. Soon he was at the public library.

The librarian blinked at the kid in the RDF uniform, but took it in stride. "Looking for some books about management?" he asked as Rick walked up.

"Huh?" Rick replied.

"Seven Successful Habits is one a lot of military officers suggest. And we have a fairly good military history section, too!" the librarian chirped happily.

"Ah, actually I'm looking for a girl," the young pilot asked. "I guess she's looking for things to help her in her modeling career. So about this tall with dark hair in braids and buns."

"Oh, that girl. She's in that back corner. Very pretty. You are a very lucky fellow!"

Thirteen frowned as she noted Rick's presence while he was talking to the librarian. She quickly closed the book on advanced programming and set it away from herself on the table. She then started to peruse the magazine about hairstyle, mentally tabulating the different looks and how this body would look with it.

"Oh, hello Rick!" Minmei said with a stunning smile. She checked her watch and looked startled. "Oh, look at the time! Did you have something you wanted to do?" She stood up and stacked her books on fashion, psychology and acting. She pointedly ignored the small scattering of books about computers, astrology and history on the long table. She immediately handed some of the books to Rick.

"Oh, nothing really. Maybe we can go for ice cream?" the pilot asked.

"Are you trying to tell me something, Rick?" she asked while looking worried. Inwardly, Thirteen was laughing. This would be too easy.

"Huh? Telling your something? I don't get it," Rick replied. He did look quite confused.

"Oh, I thought you were saying something about my figure," she replied tartly.

Mama Hunter hadn't raised a total fool. "Ah! Your figure is fine! Um, quite nice!" When it came to questions on weight, change the subject quickly. "So, psychology?"

She laughed, even as she twirled. "I've got to show my best to the world."

Behind her, the real Minmei glared at her body. Bitch. Why are you doing this? Rick never hurt anyone!

Without breaking her smile, she turned to the librarian and started to check out her books. "I'm going to be a super star, Rick! That takes a lot of work!"

Rick just had to laugh at her infectious energy. "I'll take your word for that."

Thirteen looked directly at Minmei, as if staring into space. "I'll be the most glamorous and beautiful star! I promise!" She grinned, then turned to look at Rick.

Minmei looked startled. How would that help this monster in her body?

- - -

Battle!

Location, Occupied Caprica.

Caprica 6 looked over at the other Cylons. Their recent setbacks at the hands of the giants were galling. "How goes the preparation against the Colonial attack?"

One of the 'Boomer' models smirked. "We will have seven Basestars in position in 48 hours. With the destruction of two of the last three Battlestars, our enslavers will finally be eradicated."

"And what of the situation of your rogue model?" the oldest looking Cylon asked. His dark eyes gleamed with his fanaticism to their God.

"She and Helo will be found and dealt with. They can't escape and once they see their precious fleet destroyed in the night sky above them it will destroy their will to resist us." The Asian looking Cylon did not want to be reminded of her model's failure.

"And what of the Giants in the outer system?" Caprica 6 asked nervously.

"They have been ignoring us as long as we don't intrude with ten thousand miles."

"Then they are irrelevant," a 'Doral' model said.

- - -

Location: Remnant Fleet.

"I'm looking forward to the deliberations tomorrow on Cloud 9, Madam President," Admiral William Adama said on the wireless. He nodded and then said his goodbyes. Hanging up the wireless, he looked over operations. "Dee? Can you make sure that there is a Raptor available tomorrow at 0800 hours?"

"Do you have time to gallivant over to Cloud 9 while the President selects a successor?" Tigh asked with an aggrieved tone. "We are still in the process of getting ready for the attack!" A lot of the work of the past several weeks had been on all of the XO's shoulders on all the ships.

"We still have a few days, Saul," Adama lied blandly to everyone in the room. He then headed to his apartment for the night.

- - -

Lt. Commander Fila Terris walked onto the bridge of the Seawraith at 0600 and nodded to the 3rd shift. She accepted command and took her seat. "Well, Mac, how are the preparations proceeding?" The Sea Wraith was much smaller than a Battlestar, of course, so did not require as large a bridge.

That is not to say that Terris allowed it to become overly familiar or civilian. It was clean and everything was exactly where it was supposed to be, even the new navigation computer that had been installed yesterday for the upcoming attack.

"We are still under stocked for any long term engagement. I'm really not happy with nurse-maiding the fleet,"

"We don't all get to be gunslingers, Mac," she said softly. "No matter how much we want to be."

"Yeah, yeah. Waste of talent, I tell ya. So you're heading back to Pegasus again today?"

"Correct," she lied. Any moment now, she thought.

"Commander! I have Galactica Actual on the line to the fleet. They are sending the fleet to action stations!" the fifth member of her small bridge crew called out.

"Confirm! Set action stations throughout the ship!" Terris commanded. Alarms clamored.

"Another drill? Frak!" Mac groused. He took over the ops station. As 3rd in command, he was usually down in engineering, where he would shift to in just a minute when the 2iC made it to the bridge.

- - -

Chief Tyrol slapped Apollo's helmet. "Good hunting, Sir!" With that, he closed the canopy and loaded the Viper VII into its launch chamber with the front jump sled in place.

Apollo gave his thumb's up as the large hatch closed. "Apollo to all pilots. Just because it's a live fire drill doesn't mean we get to slack off on communications. Call out!" he ordered. With a woosh, his Viper was launched. He listened to the chatter of his pilots.

In the starboard landing bay, Cally was fuming. She couldn't believe they were actually using flight suits and frakking hand-lights to direct the VFs to launch them this morning. It looked to be another day of testing the jump packs for Veritechs and Vipers.

Starbuck gave Cally a thumb's up and hit the throttle on her VF-1Ju, Dark Angel One. She'd decided to adopt the RDF's style squadron naming scheme. "Okay, people! Call out and form up!" The dark gray VF-1Ju with black stripes roared forward, even as the backwash plates in the deck lowered back down so the next Veritech could be set and ready to go.

- - -

Roy checked his displays. All of his squadron was formed up. He clicked his com to get the bridge of the Macross. "Oh, Claudia! No Lisa this morning? I hope she's not sick."

"I don't know Roy. Captain Gloval said she had something to do this morning." The Negroid woman just shrugged. "The Captain is really on one though. Be sharp."

- - -

"Why am I piloting this?" Rick asked, looking over the Raptor. He was being trained to fly fighters, not scows. He might be low on the totem pole, but he had top-notch scores and graduated highest in his class.

"Hunter!" Lisa Hayes snapped. "You are in the military. You do not question orders!"

"Sorry, Ma'am. I'm just a bit confused!" he called out while saluting.

She gave him a sharp look. "I guess you must have impressed the CAG. Don't screw this up, understood?"

"Yes, ma'am." He blinked as he saw a six man marine group jog up and salute her.

What was going on?

- - -

President Roslin blinked as the lights came on and the actions stations signal went over the intercom. She pulled on a bathrobe and headed to the small bridge where the pilot was putting on his shirt. On such a small ship, he just about lived in there over half the time. "What is going on?"

"We're receiving jump co-ordinates, Madam President. It looks like they think there might be an attack," the pilot said. "We're receiving a fleet wide from Galactica Actual now."

Adama's voice drifted over the intercom. "All ships need to be ready to jump within five minutes. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. All ships need to be ready to jump. Use the new coordinates that the Galactica is transmitting now!"

"What is going on?" she asked.

"I don't know, Madam President. If I didn't know better, I'd think that we were about to be attacked!"

- - -

Adama waited five minutes, then took up the wireless receiver again. "This is Galactica Actual. All ships, prepare to jump! And may the Gods be with us all!" He turned off the intercom and then turned to Dee. "Transmit to all Colonial Fleet; Operation Pyramid is a go as of this moment!"

"What the hell?" Tigh shouted. "We aren't supposed to be attacking for three days!"

"And that's what the Cylons will believe too," his admiral replied as he leaned in closer. "You know we are compromised three ways to Sunday. So the only way to lie to them... is to lie to everyone."

"The refugee fleet is jumping now!" Geata called out. "Apollo, form up your wing for hyperlight jump assault! Arm all weapons."

Over the intercom, Apollo's reply could be heard, "That is confirmed, Galactica! Arming all birds!" A paused and then he continued, "Reflex warhead is armed!"

"Galactica Actual, this is Starbuck! Confirming weapon ready! All birds are hot! Coordinates are locked in!" her voice called in over the radio.

Dee turned to Adama. "The Macross just folded with the last of the refugees! We are cleared!"

"Prepare for long distance fold! All pilots to your ships for immediate launch upon arrival!" Adama called out.

"All fighters are folding out now!" Dee watched the board as Vipers and Veritechs disappeared. Then the Sea Wraith and Unicorn disappeared. "Sea Wraith and Unicorn are away!"

"Fold in T-minus ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Initiating Jump!" Geata called out. And with a lurch, the Galactica vanished! "We are in transit! Five minutes until we refold!"

"All Vipers! Prepare for launch in five minutes! Prepare Raptors for assault! I want those Marines in the air in ten minutes!" Adama called out.

- - -

Sergeant Hadrin trooped along with her Marines down to the hanger. "Move it, Boomer! We've got a mission to do!" she barked out at the stunned looking Raptor pilot.

"Yes, Ma'am!" she shouted back. What was going on? And why did she feel so alone right now? She led Hadrin's troops to her Raptor as it was towed up by the flight crew, engines warming up. As she was finishing up her pre-flight check, she felt another lurch, like they had folded again.

- - -

In low orbit above Caprica, holding skywatch over the old capital the three Basestars were caught flatfooted as two Battlestars erupted into the space above them at five hundred miles away, but accelerating fast towards them. Even caught unawares and without the numerical superiority they had planned for, they immediately launched Raiders and turned to the oncoming ships.

Vipers exploded out of the Galactica and Pegasus, fanning out in front of both Battlestars!

"Follow the Vipers right in, Colonel Richards!" Gerris called out. "Rotate on axis ninety degrees, like we planned! Belly to belly with the Galactica! Mr. James, plot me a fold one thousand miles bearing mark ten!"

"Aye aye, Sir! Helm, get us moving!"

The addition of long range jump capability was an unpleasant surprise for the Cylon Basestars. They had thought the improved calculations needed for accurate jumps was at least one hundred times more than the Colonials had. Especially on such antiquated type ships. Still, they would have their number of fighters as advantage! Over six hundred Raiders launched versus just two hundred and fifty Vipers. And the rest of the fleet was only twenty minutes away! Not that they were likely to be needed, they thought.

As the Raiders and Vipers screamed toward each other and the suppression fire from both carrier groups, the Cylons estimation of the situation exploded in their face as Vipers and Veritechs folded in, behind the line of Raiders!

"Watch their covering fire! Launch missiles!" Apollo shouted, even as he triggered his own missiles. He smiled grimly as he saw he electronic warfare suite light up as the Cylons attempted to hack their electronic brains. But these missiles had RDF seekers, built on alien technological processes, not Colonial or Cylon technology. Still, even with surprise, the Cylon Basestar managed to swat over half of the missiles coming at them.

"WAHOOO!" Starbuck shouted.

It wasn't enough.

Twenty missiles, five megatons each, hit as one overwhelming fist. The Basestar at the right edge of their formation disappeared behind blinding glares of nukes going off. After the glare, there was only glowing wreckage left.

Roy had to admit, that had really worked slick... this time. They Cylons weren't likely to be suckered again.

Adama let the rest of the bridge whoop it up, then interrupted. "We still have a battle to win. Signal attack Delta-Tango!"

"Aye aye, sir!" Dee called out.

- - -

Captain "Mac" Bronzon turned to Lt. Commander Terris. "Long distance fold is complete! All refugee ships are accounted for!"

"Open a wirless link to all ships, Mac!" she said, even as she picked up her wireless handset. At his nod, she began. "Attention all ships of the fleet! This is Lt. Commander Terris! I am hereby assuming command per orders from Admiral Adama! All ships are to enter the Ragnar nebula! Seawraith and Unicorn will screen the area! We are now under communications silence!"

"Commander, the Macross is pulling away," her tactical officer called out.

"Good hunting, Captain!" Terris said softly. "Prepare to come to a stop relative to the edge of the storm. I want all three cannons ready to suppress fighters ASAP!" she snapped out.

The Macross folded in a red-gold flash, only to reappear exactly where Admiral Adama had wanted when he signaled Delta-Tango, flanking the two Basestars above Caprica. "All cannons! Fire!" Captain Gloval shouted. The four secondary railguns fired, slamming the closer Basestar with punishing force!

"Launching all fighters!" Claudia called out as Veritechs and Vipers launched from their decks.

"Continue the bombardment! Launch missiles when we have a lock!" the captain commanded.

- - -

"Commander Khyron, I think you should see this," his second in command said. He manipulated the view screen, showing a long range scan of a battle in progress. "It's Zor's ship!"

"What?" Khyron shouted. "Well, Breetai, it looks like your plan to humiliate me and leave me out of the hunt for Zor's ship has just backfired. Signal the squadron! We will fold to the battle! Prepare to wipe out the Micronians and Robotians! Glory to the Zentraedi!" he shouted. He saluted and then headed to his own battlepod.

His five ships glowed and then folded, appearing only minutes later only two hundred miles away from the battlefield.

"Prepare for long range bombardment! Destroy anything that gets in our way!"

Khyron could only smile as his lieutenant's commands. Just as he would have done it, if he wasn't preparing to launch with the battlepods! "All units! We shall show no mercy to the Micronians or Robotians! For the glory of the Zentraedi!"

- - -

"Contact!" Gaeta shouted out. "I have five object bearing mark 15. They are... seven thousand feet long each!"

Adama's blood ran cold at that pronouncement. "What? New Cylon Baseships?"

"They don't match any Cylon profile!" Tigh called out. He stared into one of the long-range scopes. "I think they may be one of the alien ships that the Macross mentioned."

"Mr. Gaeta, set a dogleg around the Basestars and rendezvous with the Macross!"

- - -

The Galactica and the Pegasus swerved at the edge of the battlefield, moving closer to the Macross while still firing heavily at the two remaining Baseships. One Baseship was almost in a direct line between the Macross and the newly arrived Zentraedi fleet that swerved to ready a long range bombardment.

"Make sure not to damage Zor's ship much! Just get those Robotian scum out of our way!" At his command, the fleet fired long range needles of blue-white energy that stabbed through the Baseship, sending it listing even as the Zentraedi battlepods swarmed closer.

Khyron sneered even as he took a petal of the flower of life and crushed it in his mailed fist. With a sniff, he savored the flavor and mentally freeing vapors of the strange flower. Then he put his helmet back on. "All units, prepare to board Zor's ship and destroy any Micronian in our way!" His officer's pod was on the edge of the formation that was closest to the strangely altered ship, but actually farthest to one side laterally.

- - -

Claudia turned to Captain Gloval. "Damage control indicates moderate damage to sector two and three. I don't think we can survive a full attack if they focus on us, sir!"

"How many civilians were hurt?" he asked.

"They can't say, but one of the shelters was hit," she replied. The other bridge bunnies looked over with upset expressions.

"We must destroy these invaders as quickly as possible. Tell Dr. Lang to initiate an immediate transformation so that we can fire the main cannon!" he thundered.

Claudia nodded even as she sneaked a quick glance at the RADAR showing the different attack groups heading to objectives down on the surface. Her friend Lisa was on one of those Raptors, leading a mission that the captain refused to talk about at this point. She really wished her younger friend were here, helping to guide the fate of this battle with her tactical and strategic sense. "Attention! Attention! Prepare for transformation!"

- - -

Minmei suddenly stood up in the self-contained shelter with her family, ignoring the strange look from Jason. "Something is happening," Thirteen whispered to herself.

"Is the big bad robot all scared?" the real Minmei asked in a saccharine sweet voice from the edge of her view.

"Shut up," she replied tersely.

Suddenly, a strange thrum of energy washed through the room invisibly. With a scream, Minmei collapsed.

- - -

"DRADIS update! The Macross is breaking up!" Richards shouted out.

Cain almost snarled. This was going to the Underworld fast! "Confirm!"

"The computer is not making sense now," a petty officer called out. He looked through the scope closer. "The Macross... it is changing its silhouette radically!"

- - -

Massive motors and gears roared throughout the ship, moving the primary hull and realigning the main guns and massive engines. In just a few minutes of movement, the odd looking carrier had transformed into the largest robot anyone had ever seen!

"Target the largest grouping of enemy ships!" Captain Gloval shouted.

"Targets Able, Beta and Gamma are sighted. Captain, the lead element of their fighters will not be hit!" Vanessa called out.

"That's what we have fighters of our own for!" he growled back. "Fire already!"

Khyron frowned even as he saw Zor's ship change its shape radically. "Now why would they do that?" It contravened all common sense to undergo mechamorphisis on such a large vehicle. Did they need to repair their ship in the middle of battle?

Then he saw the double pylons of its main cannon lowering at his fleet. "Brusgard! Get out of their! Zor's main cannon is functional!" he shouted in his intercom.

Whatever his response was lost as nuclear energies boiled from the Macross in a large arc, vaporizing three of his ship that had clumped together. Fully three quarters of his battlepods had been destroyed at the same time.

With a snarl, Khyron ordered a retreat, even as he vaporized two VF-1s that dared get in his way.

The final Baseship had decided that it was time to leave, jumping out in quick order. The Cylons would have to lose temporary control of the skies of Caprica. The fleet would have to be organized before they threw themselves in the middle of that grinder.

- - -

"What do you make of that?"

"That looks like somebody getting the crap kicked out of them in orbit," was the sage reply. The orbital battle had been readily visible, even during the middle of the day.

"I guess the Colonial Fleet finally got off their asses. Should we send a signal?"

After a long moment, he finally replied, "Sure. But I want someone to volunteer to man one of our portable radios. It could be a Cylon trick."

- - -

Lisa relaxed, even as the Raptor she was in shook as it started to bite into the air. "So, Corporeal Hunter, are you able to fake a problem and land us at these coordinates?" she asked as she handed him a paper map with coordinates.

Rick snuck a quick glance at the paper. He would have to change course immediately. "Yes. I wish you'd given me a bit more warning, Commander! Hang on!" He feathered the controls on one of the engines, sending the Raptor lurching. When Galactica came on the radio, he informed them that he was losing power and he'd try to make a landing and regroup when he could.

He fought the combat shuttle into a rough landing on a sloping grass hill in between the buildings. "Here we are, Ma'am!" Rick said with an uncomfortable smile.

"Stay here with the Raptor. Sgt. Matthewson, we need to get moving. The college library is right there and the Cylon War Memorial museum is over there! We are looking for anything intelligence related to the Cylons. If you can find any deactivated older model Cylons, grab them," Lisa Hayes ordered even as she pulled out her sidearm. "Hunter, try to stall any rescue attempts. Tell them we are checking out our Raptor and we should be able to catch up."

"Aye, aye!"

- - -

Apollo relaxed as the last Raider hyper-jumped out. "Thank gods. Okay, everyone form up. I want..." The CAG of the Galactica just blinked as he spun his Viper Mark VIIu back around, taking in an incredible sight.

"What the frak is that?" Mark 'Wipeout' Tron asked.

"Galactica, I think we have a situation," Apollo said as he switched channels.

"That's a frakking understatement!" Starbuck said, a bit of fear in her voice. "Galactica, switching targets to that frakking huge Cylon that used to be the Macross!"

Adama's voice cut through the jabbering voice, "Belay that! The Macross is not a Cylon! I repeat, the Macross is not a Cylon! That is an emergency reconfiguration that it has to undergo to use its main weapon!"

- - -

A Model 6 Cylon jogged into the control room of the ground forces on Caprica. "How could it go wrong so quickly?"

Other Cylons were plugged into the defense grid, watching the battle overhead. An 8 looked up. "They lied. It seems lies are good for both sides to use with sneak attacks. Our last Baseship is about to depart."

On the DRADIS screen, the Baseship vanished. "We have lost skywatch." That was obvious, of course. The two Battlestars disappeared; heading to who knows where, while the strange alien carrier was in a degrading orbit. "It would probably break up soon due to reentry," Caprica 6 said in a toneless voice.

A model 2 just shook his head, his gray hair flashing in the dim red lights. "That alien carrier is land assault capable. This is just another part of their plan."

"How long until our fleet can relieve us?" a model 4 asked, his short dusty hair plastered down in sweat.

"Probably closer to an hour now. The humans really surprised us. And we want to swamp that Macross with fighters. Its main weapon is far too powerful for our Baseships to face."

"What about the Giants?"

"They are retreating too."

- - -

The Macross glowed, spending the fury of reentry as it slowed down on the fires of fusion and the invisible power of its antigravity generators. It was back in carrier mode, like ship on a sea of fire. Small fighters buzzed around it as a deadly defense.

"Gravity generators are holding, Captain," Claudia turned to tell him.

"Good! The reinforced brackets and using the rockets in conjunction seems to be working very well. How are the Veritechs and Vipers doing?" Gloval asked.

"They are holding steady in formation! Destroids are in their bays and ready to deploy!" Vanessa called out.

"Ready the railguns for long range bombardment! I want all of those anti-aircraft missile batteries destroyed!"

The forward four main railgun traversed and thundered Caprica City below, smashing the missile batteries before they could range.

"Send in the Vipers and Veritechs to open us a landing zone!" Gloval ordered. "Remind the pilots to have their recorders on for later debriefing."

- - -

The Galactica flashed into existence near a large asteroid. Gaeta turned to Tigh. "Varker anchorage on DRADIS."

"Launch Vipers and Raptors. I want the Cylon defense screen force out of here!" Tigh snapped out.

Over a hundred Vipers rushed towards the refinery installation on the asteroid. Thirty Raiders rose up in defense with a seeming of reluctance.

Apollo checked his reading. "Prepare to fire missiles on my mark! I want those Raiders destroyed in the first pass!" He waited ten seconds as the range decreased. "FIRE!" he shouted.

Over two hundred missiles blossomed towards the Raiders as they tried to fire or evade. The dumb AI's were locked on, only three Raiders survived the torrential onslaught. Before the rest of the Vipers could range in with their railguns, the Raiders ran. They hyperlighted out in gold and red flashes.

Adama nodded. "Get Big Bertha here and load her up on all the Tylinium that is in those storage tankers."

- - -

"I guess we got the easy job," Colonel Christopher Richards said as the Pegasus sounded the all clear.

His Commander, Garris Cain, just smiled. "For some reason, the Cylons didn't think an orbital warehouse full of slightly old emergency rations and uniforms was a vital target."

"Enough rations for over fifty Battlestars. That ought to keep us fed for a few months."

- - -

"Okay, Dark Angels, switch to Guardian mode on my mark and drop into the hills on the other side of the strip!" Starbuck called out. "Hey! Sparky! Try to keep up!" she called out.

Roy just sputtered. "Don't call me Sparky!" he said, even as his own Veritechs followed the darker colored Colonial VFs down.

The Cylons had no heavy armored units deployed. In just minutes, the Veritechs had pushed over the hill and cleared a landing zone. Once that had been communicated, the Macross settled in the middle of the city.

Destroids of all sorts tromped down landing ramps and into the city. In the vanguard tromped two MAC "Monsters" HWR-00 that moved with a sluggishness that belied their massive firepower. Defender ADR-04-Mk X, Phalanx SDR-04-Mk XII, Spartan MBR-07-Mk II and Tomahawk MBR-04-Mk VI spread out, blasting any tiny Cylons that dared show their metal hides. The "Monsters" shot down any Raiders out of the air with their prodigious cannons at extreme long range.

RDF Marines followed behind, securing the building that used to house part of the Colonial Fleet command.

- - -

Deep underground Caprica City in the sewers, Boomer looked over at Helo. Her eyes were closed as if she was concentrating. She had a decision to make. "Helo?"

He was startled by her suddenly speaking. It sounded like heavy pounding of artillery and shelling up above. "Yes?"

She took out her gun. "This is very hard for me." The buzzing of the Cylon communication showed Colonial and strange, giant robots piloted by the humans of that strange carrier. She put her gun in his hands and tightened his grip around it. "Under Colonial military rules of engagement, I'm requesting asylum."

Helo just stared at her. "Sharon, that's only for enemy combatants."

"That right. That's because I am... I was the enemy. I'm a Cylon," she said softly, fear in her voice.

"Are you out of your frakkin mind?"

- - -

Helo had his gun pointed at Sharon, pushing her forward with her hands on her head. "Just keep moving, Toaster!" he almost snarled. He had thought it some nightmarish joke, but she was insistent.

Sharon just nodded. They were moving towards the fighting in the eerily empty road. Suddenly, three Colonial marines had them surrounded as they appeared from cover. "Don't move!" the lead one shouted. "Put the gun down!"

"I've got a prisoner!" Helo called out.

"You've got Boomer, dumb ass!" another marine called out. "Hey, Boomer? I thought we told you to stay with the Raptor?"

"No, I've got a Boomer, you fraks! She's a Cylon!" the pilot shouted back.

"Hey! I'm asking for asylum!" she retorted.

The marines suddenly shared a worried look. "She's really a Cylon?"

"I'm really the frakkin real thing of a Cylon! And I'd really not appreciate being killed for switching sides!" Sharon said, looking over her shoulder nervously.

"Hadrin, we've got a situation. I think you need to come see this yourself," the marine corporeal said over his radio.

Ten minutes later, Sgt. Hadrin tromped up, fully kitted up with a rifle full of AP rounds. "What's the sit- Boomer? I just left you... Frak me running. Why haven't you shot the frakkin Toaster?"

"She surrendered and is desiring asylum," Helo said, still pointing his gun at Boomer's head.

"That's for humans, not toasters," Hadrin argued. "But more prisoners are always good. Now how do we capture our Boomer? I left her alone back at the Raptor."

- - -

Boomer just stared out the front of the Raptor as Hadrin and her goons were talking to someone in a flight uniform just barely in view down the road. She had a creepy feeling, even though she couldn't see the person. They had long hair though.

A scuff behind her alerted her to someone entering her ship. She turned with her gun up. "Helo?" she exclaimed in surprise. "You managed to survive?"

"Yes. I'm not sure how, but I did," he tried to say casually. "I've been dodging the Cylons for weeks. Hey, is that Hadrin?" he said, looking over her shoulder. "It looks like they captured someone!"

Boomer turned around, seeing Hadrin's group still just barely in sight. "I can barely see them-" Pain exploded in the back of her head. She staggered into the console, turning just in time to get pistol-whipped again by Helo.

Helo pulled out a walkie-talkie. "Raptor is clear." He pointed the pistol at the Boomer in front of him as the troops trotted up with the other one. "Frak me running," he muttered.

- - -

Admiral Adama paced as he waited for Raptors to make it back to the Galactica. The Macross was still assaulting the Caprician Colonial Defense Headquarters that the Cylons had taken over.

"Contact! Many, many contacts!" Geata shouted out.

Adama and Tigh spun back to the DRADIS display. Tigh finally found his voice. "How many Raiders and Basestars?" he croaked.

"I count fourteen- No, fifteen Cylon Basestars! The computers can't count how many Raiders," Gaeta shouted out, almost in a panic. But the DRADIS... it can track over a thousand fighters!"

"Terminate the operation! Recall all Vipers, Veritechs and Raptors. The Galactica and Pegasus will fall back to point bravo. Tell the Macross the Cylon reinforcements are more heavy than expected and to fall back immediately." Suddenly, he yelled out, "Move, damn you! We only have minutes before they hit us like an avalanche!"

- - -

The Raptor was in a small forest near the Delphi War museum, It was under camo netting at to make it even harder to see as it wasn't it's customary bronze color but a forest camo color. It was all but invisible from the air. But that couldn't be said for the team for the team that was exposed.

Now Lisa and her recon marines were running to the tree line, with Cylon Heavy Raider coming down on them. Then was a "puff" and "fowshh" as the raider was destroyed by a shoulder launched SAM.

"COME ON!" Yelled Sgt. Matthewson said as he discarded the now useless launcher.

Lisa slid into the copilots seat on the left side. As soon as she was strapped she started spinning up the Raptors FTL drive.

No sooner was the hatch closed, then the Raptor took to the air. Making it's all or nothing dash to orbit

"Oh Shit.." Rick said has he looked at the Ra.. the DRADIS screen as another Raider was coming up behind them . It fired a missile. Instinctively Rick turn to look behind him to see how close the missile was. And he felt like a dumbass because all he saw the back of the Raptor. He look at the DRADIS display and it showed that the missile's range was only two hundred meters away. Instantly, Rick pulled a hard right turn, one the Raptor wasn't designed to make in atmosphere.

Dodging a missile is simple and complex. The simple part was an aircraft even a flying brick like the Raptor, could out turn a missile in atmosphere. Due the fact the Aircraft had a much larger control surfaces in proportion to a missile.

The Complex part was the timing, when to turn. Too early and the missile could fallow the turn, too late and the missile could pass too close setting off the proximity fuse.

The Missile passed harmlessly by less then fifty meters. Rick fought the controls as the turn threatened to stall his aircraft. Rick managed to wobbly bring the Raptor back under control.

He briefly considering to continue their run to orbit, when those thoughts died a painful death, as he looked back down at the DRADIS screen and saw six more contacts. "Faster would be Better!" Rick said to Lt. Commander Hayes.

Then the DRADIS pinged again looking down, as more contracts appeared on the screen.

"Commander, now would be an excellent time for us to leave!"

"I'm already working on it Hunter!" Lisa was going to tell him that it wasn't safe to jump when they were this low. But their Raptor had no ECM gear, no weapons and no where near the thrust to weight ratio to out climb a Raider. "Done!" As she finished the Jump prep.

"Roger, Jumping NOW!"

And in a flash of light the Raptor vanished,

- - -

The Macross continued to surge upward redlining it's engines, pushing her to her maximum atmospheric speed, That could be attained in attack mode. With Valkyrie and Raptors trailing behind in her wake.

Then it started raining. Raining missiles the missiles streaked down from the sky like meteorites, as if thrown down from the heavens by an angry god to punish man.

Well man responded in kind. The point defense weapons fired. And the twilight sky was lit with fire.

The bridge shook as a few of the missiles got through.

"What's our altitude?"

"Fifty kilometers we need to be at least four hundred," Claudia reported.

"Status of the main cannon?"

Normally it was the XO's but Lisa wasn't here that job fell to Lieutenant Grant.

Claudia adjusted the monitor above her.

"Main cannon capacitors are reading 92 of nominal charge."

"SIR!Cylon Basestar jumped in, it's on inter-No wait on collision course with us!" Vanessa nearly screamed. "It's dropping like a rock. Impact in forty seconds."

"FIRE the Main!" Gloval ordered.

The twin booms of the main cannon leveled on its target and let loss a torrent of energy that rent trough the air with an end of the world scream. The beam hit the Basestar with the predictable results, it was annihilated, as it was literally burned away.

The remaining fourteen basestars were in a geosynchronous orbit of about 35,000 kilometers. Over the Macross and thinking they were safe as they rained down missiles. On the interloper that dared interfere with their plans!. That all stopped in the when the orange red beamed flashed by.

The ships weren't tightly packed together. So while the beam didn't hit anything, as it spectacularly but harmlessly passed by.

But it did pass close enough for the fourteen Cylon baseship AIs to have the cybernetic equivalent of a brain fart.

As they realized that the main cannon's range was more then eight times then they expected. Now they were faced with the reality of the true range of this hideous weapon. Not wanting to find about the refire rate the Basestars jumped out.

- - -

Location: Colonial One, Four hours later.

After the Macross rejoined the fleet, and the subsequent jump out of the Colonial home system, Siran. After the jump it was time to debrief the president. President Roslin requested that Admiral Adama and Commander Cain debrief her aboard Colonial One. It was a small but in no means subtle reminder that she is the commander and chief. And that she was a little angry about not being informed about the stepping up of Operation Pyramid.

It took a little over a half an hour, before both raptors docked with Colonial one.

"Madam President, I am going to call operations to a halt and guardedly a success," Admiral William Adama said in the conference room.

"What aren't you telling me, Admiral?" she asked with cool reserve. She had her glasses perched on her nose and reading reports.

"We have recovered fifteen thousand civilians and evacuated them to the Redemption under minimal living conditions. We now have enough Tylinium to supply all ships in the fleet for over ten months of normal usage. We have also recovered basic food supplies from warehouses on the ground. Our cost for this was the lost of forty-two pilots. The Pegasus and our refinery ships are replacing our lost Vipers and Raptors, but pilots take months to train." Adama stole a quick glance with Garris.

"Adama?" the president asked. He obviously had something unpleasant to tell her.

"We lost a high ranking officer on one of the Raptors. Lt. Commander Hayes and her Raptor have been declared Missing in Action. The problem is, Madam President, that I have no idea what that Raptor was doing. Her mission was not declared and Captain Gloval will only tell us that it was performing 'intelligence gathering'."

"And you don't think she was gathering information on Cylons?" Billy asked as he steeped his fingers.

"Actually, we think that is exactly what they were doing," Garris said roughly.

"Uncensored and untainted by Colonial media, of course. We backtracked Hayes's Raptor to the Delphi War Museum. Which is near the Delphi University, probably one of the most bleeding heart liberal universities in the Colonies."

Billy winced. "That's what she was fishing for. I'm sorry, Madam President, I think it's my fault that she picked that area to investigate."

"So they lied to us to get more information about the Cylons," Adama said with a gravelly tone. "This is bad, Madam President."

"While I might admit that Delphi U is a touch liberal, I don't think Captain Gloval is going to accept that on its own." Roslin stood up. "The one thing it isn't going to do is hide how terribly we treated the Cylons."

"We never hid that," Adama argued.

"Admiral, did you ever tell them that we built the Cylons to wage war even after we knew they were sentient?" she snapped out.

"No, I didn't. But I'm not sure we can trust them anymore."

She turned to him and took off her glasses. "Admiral, I don't want you to reveal the results of this meeting, but you will do nothing to jeopardize our relationship with the RDF and the Macross in any shape or form. Captain Gloval is entitled to check our story and bonafides."

"Madam President!…"

"Admiral Adama," Roslin cut him off. Her tone now low and dangerous. "Let me make this clear, you are not to endanger our relationship with the Macross. If you can't you will have you will be relived!" Lara finished. "Do I make myself clear." The tone was just a little higher and sound even more dangerous.

The result, it had on Admiral Adama, was like an electric shock as he stood a little straighter.

"Aye aye, ma'am" Adama said as saluted the president and left the office.

When door shut closed behind the admiral. Roslin let out a tired sigh before turning to

Commander Cain. "Do you think he'll listen?"

Cain just shrugged. "He will confront them, ask what was their team doing at Delphi, but.. he will obey your order."

Laura nodded and after a moment, she noticed that Cain was still in the room.

"Ma'am, pardon me for asking. But you seem to be spending great deal of time trying to reconstitute the government. Wouldn't it be easier to wait until we can organizing things in a less chaotic situation?"

Lara stopped and walk over to sit in a chair that was opposite of Cain's. "What I'm going to say stays in this room." After taking a breath she continues. "Right now I'm the whole government and I have cancer, I really don't have all that long to live, so we need to set something up to fall back on. When I..." She didn't finish she didn't have to.

Cain just nodded in understanding. "Well, I have to get back to my ship." Cain said as he stood up, "Good day, Madam President."

- - -

Location: Battlestar Galactica BSG-078, Operation Pyramid Debrief, two hours Later in the ward Room

"Moving on Admiral," Commander Terris said. "We have three fleet resupply vessels in the fleet. The Redemption, Clarine's Call, And Wayfarer. The Redemption wasn't carrying a full load when the attacks took place. If we want to we can clear out the Redemption, by distributing the rest of her cargo among the two cargo ships and the Galactica and Pegasus."

"So the question is, what do we do with it?" Adama asked.

"Jeep carrier." Gloval said.

"Beg your pardon?" Cain asked.

Gloval looked at the colonials. "Sixty years ago two countries on my world used modified merchant ships as carriers for escorting convoys."

"That's ambitious Captain. But my Chief Engineer has a different idea," Terris began. "We want to add fold drives to the Redemption."

"Why can't we make the Modifications to our existing FTL drives, like the Macross did to theirs?" Colonel Richards asked.

"We used their schematics and technical data to build new fold drives for the Macross. If we try to do the same thing with the FTL drives on the Pegasus or Galactica, or any other ship we're looking at tearing them down and doing a complete rebuild." Terris answered.

"Where with the Redemption we can just put the new fold engines and power plants in the cargo hold." Adama said, and then he sighed "Both ideas have their merits. I'll have to discuss this one with the President. Anything else."

No one said anything then Adama nodded. "This is meeting is adjourned."

As every started to stand Adama asked. "Captain Gloval could you please stay there's something we need too discuss."

Gloval sat down again both men were quiet until well after the hatch was closed. Then Adama broke the silence with a sigh before he began.

"What were you doing at Delphi?"

"We were gathering intelligence about the Cylons, and information about Artificial intelligence."

"Why?"

"I'll answer that question, if you answer mine?" After a pause Gloval continued. "Did you build the Cylons?"

Adama paused as he considered his answer but it didn't matter, he had to tell the truth, if he didn't it would be that much more damning when it finally came to light. "Yes, we did."

Gloval sighed as he took off his uniform cap running his hand through his hair. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"I didn't trust you. Would you have helped us knowing if this was our fault?"

"That depends, if the Cylons were just fighting for their freedom. We may have just stayed out of this. But this is genocide pure and simple, they made an attack on my ship. As I said earlier we're all in this together." Gloval answered sincerely then he continued to answer Adama's question. "Alright we have our own ongoing AI research on the Macross and back home. We have eighty ghost drone fighter onboard, we haven't used them since the attack. Also we would like to avoid the same problems. Is there anything else Admiral?"

Adama just shook his head.

"Very well then." Gloval said as he put his uniform cap back on and left the wardroom.

- - -

Location: Battlestar Pegasus BSG-125. Two weeks later.

While the Pegasus was built fifteen years after the Galactica, and later used as a testbed for the Mercury class despite this she was more or less based on the same basic plan and deck layout has a her older sister. So once you know your way around one ship then getting around the other easy. Which Laura Roslin thanked the gods for, as she made her way to the ward room for a meeting with Commander Cain, the civilian captains of the refinery and salvage tugs and some of the best engineers that could be scrounged up from the fleet.

The agenda was a little mining operation that Gloval called Mohammed. When ask Gloval's reply had been "If Mohammed won't come to the mountain then the mountain will come to Mohammed."

It was simple, rather then having the mining ships sitting on an asteroid for weeks extracting material when in heavily cluttered field that would be perfect for a ambush. The Macross will fold in with some of the richest rocks they could bring. The Galactica would be providing over watch and support.

Normally a meeting like this would be held on Cloud 9. But if reforming Quorum of Twelve Colonies got a whiff of this, then it could get quickly bogged down in politics. What she needed to know was what could the fleet really do and not get bogged down in some pipe dream.

Roslin just entered the room when,. "Action Station! Action Stations! Set condition one through out the ship," was heard over the intercom.

Cain had been sitting in the ward room a long with twenty others waiting for the president to arrive. With a disgusted look on his face walk Cain walked over to the wall unit switching it on. "What have we've got?"

"One large unknown contact probably a Basestar, jumped in DRADIS range on intercept with us. Range 17 kilometers."

"One my way with the president." Then Cain turned to the Laura. "Ma'am if you will come with me."

In a little over a minute both walked into Pegasus's CIC Laura found place against a bulkhead so that she wouldn't be put in anybody's way.

"They just launched raiders. CAP is on its way to intercept right now." Colonel Chris Richards said, as soon as Cain entered the CIC.

"Is the Redemption ready for fold?" Cain asked.

His XO just shook his head.

"Damnit." He muttered, Cain thought about what to do. "Launch the alert fighters. Have the FTLs jump, the STLs are to angle away from the Basestar at full burn. Get a Raptor on its way to the Galactica."

"Commander! Receiving friendly transponder recognition codes!" Major Drumm reported form his station.

"What? Confirm that." Cain nearly barked out.

"Confirmed, transponder reads Battlestar Griffin."

Cain turned to his communication officer, "Send a message Priority one ship to ship, hostile challenge and demand authentication."

"Receiving codes right now." After a few seconds. "Codes confirmed."

- - -

Garris Cain picked up the growler phone, there was a long tone that was heard through out the Pegasus. "Attention, this is the commander. We recently made contact with the Battlestar Griffin, under the command of Admiral Helena Cain."

That brought a painful wince to some of the crew that had been on board during the Uvon incident. Some still nursing wounds form the not-_quite_ witch hunt, that the following investigation nearly turned into.

"Due to the classified nature of our mission prior to the attacks, it is unlikely they would know about the Macross's existence. I would like it to keep it that way until we can confirm their identity. So no mention of the Macross and of any supplies that are non-Colonial in origin. That is all." Cain said as he put the hand set down in cradle. It was a little childish he thought, the Pegasus did receive the proper authentication codes. But it's better to be safe then sorry, besides it would be nice to see his niece squirm for a change.

Before leaving the CIC he ordered a Raptor to be sent to the Galactica with a message and that they found the BSG-215 Griffin.

"Is there anything I should know about?" Roslin asked as she followed Cain and Colonel Richards out of CIC.

"Admiral Cain is my niece, she was fast tracked into command, bumped to the top of the promotion list," Cain almost spat out. "Madam President, do you remember the Uvon attack?"

Roslin nodded.

"Well, then Commander Helena Cain, was part of the investigation. It wasn't a very pleasant experience, ma'am. Helena Cain doesn't just kick rocks over to see what's underneath them. She pulverizes the rock first and then pulverizes what's underneath then looks," Colonel Richards explained. "Though we were eventual cleared of any wrong doing, She still managed to carry out some punitive actions on some members of the crew that effectively ruined their careers."

"Wait, I thought they were innocent?" Laura interrupted.

"They were, but that's one of the dirty little secrets of the military. Ma'am even if you were found innocent, and the brass is pissed by being upstaged or they _think _you are guilty or incompetent. Well, they can do a great many things to make you want to leave. Dead end posting, flagging your file, drooping you down to the bottom of the promotion list and so on." Cain explained. "When we heard that she made admiral there were some grumbles."

"Is she competent?"

"That depends, she graduated at the top of her class," Richards began. "But some would feel better if she was more experienced. You know she's not going to like it when she finds out that Adama is in command by presidential order."

"Well, that's what happens when you miss meetings. You get left out," Was Cain's response.

'Oh this is going to be so much fun,' Roslin thought sarcastically as she fallowed the two men.

- - -

Location: Battlestar Griffin BSG-215, Brig.

When Admiral Cain told them that she had a Cylon in her brig. Laura had demanded to see it. Maybe it would another of the theorized twelve models. They had already caught two more models in the fleet.

She took a quick shuttle ride over with her escorts, where they quickly made their way to the brig.

"Oh, my gods," Laura whispered as she saw the figure in the Griffin's brig. It was naked, clearly female, badly bruised and shackled to the deck. It was worse because she recognized the woman.

Admiral Helena Cain Stood aside proudly displaying the brigs occupant. "We found this Cylon and a few others, on a raptor a few days ago."

President Laura Roslin turned to face Cain, as rage started to built up inside her. 'The smug bitch was actually proud of it!' she thought as her rage built and built until it exploded and then she did a very very unpresidential thing. She punched Admiral Helena Cain, right in the face.

"_YOU FRACKIN IDIOT_!" Roslin screamed. The punch was a short vicious jab straight in the center of Cain's face, breaking her nose and sending the Admiral slamming into the bulkhead.

In retrospect it would have been funny. It's not often you see a sitting president physical assaulting a flag officer. It is even rarer when said president is cancer patient. But there was nothing funny about the situation now. As soon as the two Marines saw their admiral go down, they immediately trained their weapons on Roslin. And so did the president's four bodyguards except they were much quicker and trained their weapons on the two marines.

"_DROP IT!"_ Said one bodyguard as another relieved the marines of their weapons.

"What the hell are you doing?" Helena Cain demanded from the deck.

"Saving our species from your stupidity!" Roslin said as one of her bodyguards relieved the Admiral of her sidearm. "Get this door open!" Roslin ordered. Another of her bodyguards stepped forward with a keycard taken from one of the Marines.

"You're making a mistake," Cain said with a dangerous edge to her voice.

Roslin just ignored her as she entered the cell.

Kneeling down next to the beaten woman, she took off her Blazer and put around on the woman's shoulders. "Commander Hayes we're getting you out here," Roslin said in as gentle a voice as possible.

Turning to her bodyguard, she ordered, "Josh, get the Pegasus, tell them we found the lost recon team."

- - -

Location: Battlestar Griffin BSG-212, CIC.

"COLONEL! Out going wireless transmission!"

"What is it?" Fisk said.

"Something about a lost recon team and… Presidential orders to arrest Admiral Cain for treason."

"Like hell jam that transmission." Fisk, Ordered. "Find them."

- - -

Location: SDF-1 Macross, Bridge.

The Macross came out fold with three resource rich asteroids and various smaller ones that drifted into the fold zone.

"What the-?" Gloval said has he jumped up from the captain's chair to the front of the bridge. Looking out he could the Pegasus and another Battlestar were parallel to each other, like two ancient Man Of War ready to fire broadsides. Vipers were buzzing between the two ships like a swarm of angry hornets.

"Damnation! Launch the Alert flight, no fighter is to engage unless fired upon. And get me Admiral Adama."

"Yes, sir."

- - -

Location: Battlestar Galactica BSG-078, CIC.

Tigh and Adama were looking at the DRADIS and just about anyone who could spare a moment to look.

Gaeta worked furiously to determine what the display was showing him.

"Macross reports that Pegasus is facing off against the Griffin!" Dee reported.

"What! How the do they know what's going on?" Tigh asked.

"Their Bridge has a window and they're looking out of it." Dee relayed.

Adama chuckled as he spoke, "Get me the Pegasus."

"I've got Gloval and Commander Cain on three way." Dee said from her station.

"What?" Adama said into the growler phone just moments later. Adama took the phone away from his hear and turned to Tigh.

"Get the Dark Angels out there, Have them relive Red Squadron. If this goes bad the last thing we need is for both sides to be flying the same fighters!"

Tigh just nodded, then Adama turned to Gaeta. "Mr. Gaeta confer with your counterpart on board the Macross, if the Griffin tries too run we want the try and disable her."

- - -

Location: Battlestar Griffin BSG-215, CIC.

"Colonel, new DRADIS Contacts. One Battlestar and one unknown contact. I'm picking up additional launches from the unknown." The sensor operator said. Sweet Artemis how many fighters do they have, he thought? "Estimated fighter strength is six squadrons not counting the one launched From the one Galactica and I'm still reading launches from the Unknown!"

"Colonel, Galactica is signaling for our surrender."

"Frak that! Recall the Vipers. We're leaving. And some find the Admiral."

"Aye sir,"

- - -

Location: Battlestar Galactica BSG-075, CIC.

"She's spinning up her FTL drives," Gaeta reported from his station.

"Take, the SHOT!" Adama ordered.

"Macross, Galactica Take the shot!" said Dee, relaying the order.

- - -

The Macross was already in higher position relative to the Griffin.

The starboard arm of the ship swung down slightly and the number three rail gun made one final adjustment.

And fired.

- - -

Location: Griffin Red Team Viper MK VII, Captain Cole Taylor CAG, Call sign Stinger.

He was just lining up for his approach for a combat landing when he spared a glance at the blue and white monstrosity off in the distance. It must be huge, he thought, to be able to see it from this distance. Then he saw flashes of light. One, two, three flashes, followed next by three hits, on the topside of the Griffin. He couldn't see where she was hit but he could guess.

His guess was proved right when he heard over the Radio. "Vipers abort landing."

Now he was too close the Griffin to peal off without crashing into it. Instead he pulled what carrier pilots on earth called a bolter.

His viper buzzed the deck less then meter above the Vipers now scattered across the deck.

"All, right form up!" Stinger ordered immediately he turned and looked doing a quick count and saw he had a bigger problem he only counted twenty-seven Vipers. The Griffin had two squadrons with forty fighters each.

Location: Battlestar Griffin BSG-215, CIC

Colonel Fisk picked himself off the Map table, looking pissed, angry and scared at the same time. "Damage report!" Fisk bellowed as soon as he got the phone to his ear.

"FTL is down, the main heat sink is damaged and we have a coolant leak with several compartments either open to space or contaminated with coolant," came the report from the engineer over the phone.

"Sir, receiving a message from unknown."

"Lets hear it," Fisk said.

"Repeat, this is Captain Gloval of the Macross. Calling the Battlestar Griffin, you are illegally detaining members of my crew. Surrender now before things get violent."

- - -

Lisa Hayes limped behind Roslin and her bodyguards, her face flat and her responses were terse and with no feeling. She could barely follow orders from someone that she thought was trying to rescue her. The hypnotic commands deep within her psyche almost had her entirely non-functional. All that was left was duty.

Suddenly, she turned and opened another door.

"Commander Hayes, what are you doing?" President Roselyn asked.

"My... men..." she muttered. She finally got the door opened. A guard on the other side relaxed as he saw the familiar uniform of an officer even as he looked nervously at the condition alert lights. "At... ease," Lisa said in a monotone voice.

"Yes, Ma'am." The guard had just dropped to parade rest when two of the president's guards rounded the corner, pistols already trained on him.

"Don't move. Don't make a sound," the stocky, lead guard said. He quickly disarmed the soldier, bracketing the cells with his cold eyes. "President Roselyn, there's another prisoner here. He looks beat up pretty bad."

The naked form groaned in the small cell.

"Rick..." Lisa muttered.

"Get him into a uniform," the president ordered.

- - -

"Colonel, you are out gunned and out numbered and can not run," Adama said into his phone. "I have orders from the President of the Colonies to arrest Admiral Cain. Stand down, for gods' sakes. I don't want to kill your men!"

"There are no Colonies, _Admiral_ Adama. Last I heard, you were a mere Commander of a decommissioning Battlestar that Fleet Command had consigned you to because of refusing to follow orders and for disregarding new regulations!" Fisk snapped back. The DRADIS was sending a bloodcurdling message of almost twelve squadrons of fighters arrayed against his forces.

"President Roslin ascended to the presidency as 43rd in line. Colonel, either way I still outrank you, you have received your orders. Stand down," Adama ordered.

Tigh winced from where he stood on the other side.

"Frak you!" Fisk shouted. He slammed his handset down. "How long until we can get the heat sink jury rigged? Gunnery, give me fire suppression on all fighters that gets within two clicks!"

"Fifteen minutes until the heat sink is fixed!"

Adama closed his eyes, a sad expression on his face. "Mr. Gaeta. Open a wireless to all Griffin pilots."

"Ready."

"This is Admiral William Adama of the Battlestar Galactica to all pilots from the Griffin. Be aware you are acting under illegal orders. I do not want to order you destroyed, but I will not allow you to stop me from taking the Griffin. Shut down your engines and DRADIS," he said. "You have two minutes." He clicked off the line. "Tigh, form up our battle line."

"Macross actual on the line. Captain Gloval has a plan," Gaeta called out.

- - -

Fisk stared aghast as his DRADIS operator reported the impossible. "They're going to ram us?"

"Ten seconds!"

"Rotate to put our top armor to the attack! All hands, brace for impact!" Colonel Fisk yelled.

Out in space, protoculture powered servos flexed, slamming the Daedelus prow-first into the port landing bay of the Griffin. The ground crew ran for the forward end of the bay, calling out for damage control even as Mark VII Vipers were knocked over.

Suddenly, the battered armor hatch opened and six Spartan destroids stepped onto the deck. Calls for damage control changed to screams for heavy ground weapons against Cylons.

Fisk frowned at that. "Chief Kinley! Snap out of it man. What are you seeing? We don't have heavy ground weapons. We're a Battlestar, not ground pounders!"

"They've landed an army with giant Cylons!" the Chief responded.

"Giant Cylons?"

Out in space, the Dark Angels waited for the signal from the commanding officer. Starbuck was looking over the situation. "Okay, Angels. On my mark, we are hitting that landing bay coming in from the front."

With a roar of engines, the Dark Angels over the back of the Macross, down its shoulder and then slipped under the Griffin's port landing bay that had an the assault carrier shoved into it.

They did an about face as they cleared the front of the bay, switching to Guardian Mode and skimmed across the land deck, guns pointed at the suddenly surrounded work crew. Over her wireless, Starbuck shouted, "Don't move! Lay down with your hands and legs spread out!"

Kinley stared at the strange mixture of fighter and robot with Colonial markings on it. The human pilots inside of the contraption were easily visible. The words finally got through his disbelief. Nodding to his men, he laid down.

"Dark Angel One to Galactica Actual! We in control of the port bay!" Starbuck informed his commanding officer.

"Aknowledged, Dark Angel One. Galactica Actual, over and out." He waited until he was switched back to the Griffin. "Colonel Fisk, in about five minutes you are about to be boarded and a lot of your men are going to die. Surrender and I will try to be lenient. Don't and I'll come done on you personally like a mountain."

Colonel Fisk held the phone to his ear. Finally he closed his eyes. "Understood." He switched channels. "All hands, this is Griffin Actual. Stand down! We surrender!"

- - -

Commander Hayes peeked out the doorway, hearing the tromping of boots coming closer. The white with red markings of space combat impinged on her limited awareness. "RDF," she said.

"What?" one of the bodyguards asked. He looked out, seeing the RDF marines down the hall. He thumbed his communicator back on. "This is Colonial Presidential Guard. What is the situation?"

"The Griffin is under our control. It's finally safe," Adama called out.

- - -

Adama stepped into the Griffin's brig, marines from the Galactica and Pegasus everywhere. He looked at the fuming woman wearing her military issued undergarments. "Admiral Cain. You are hereby relieved of your command and you are now under Colonial military arrest. You will be transferred to the Galactica pending your court martial."

"Who the frak do you think you are?" Admiral Helena Cain spat back.

"I am fleet Admiral William Adama."

"You are not. I know all of the Admirals of the Colonial Fleet from before the attack!"

"I was raised in rank by President Laura Roselyn to take command of all of the Colonial Fleet that is part of the Colonial Remnant," he explained.

"I outrank you!" she snapped.

"You don't outrank the President of the Colonies, Admiral. And it isn't likely you will get to keep your rank for very long," he said coldly. "And considering the charges I've seen, you'll be lucky to avoid a firing squad."

"You really have been taken over by the Cylons! Those spies were loaded down with Cylon equipment-"

"Because they were studying them. The Macross is a displaced ship that is not part of the Colonies. Their actions have saved tens of thousands of Colonials. They just volunteered in gratitude for the Colonies repairing their ships." Adama stared at her coldly. "I find the idea of torturing anyone with rape to be totally reprehensible. We don't treat our Cylon prisoners with kindness, but we do not treat sentients in a way that destroys ourselves."

"You frakkin bastard! I was doing my duty!"

"Get her out of here!" Adama ordered. He turned and walked up to the Griffin's CiC. A nod from Sgt. Hadrin at the stocky gray-haired man focused his gaze on Colonel Fisk.

"Colonel Fisk. I'm glad that some sanity survived on this ship. Because of that, I am merely removing from command and placing you under house arrest. Return to your quarters until the investigation shows that you are to be released or charged with crimes under Colonial law. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," the shattered officer said. He was escorted from room by two marines from the Pegasus.

Adama quickly dealt with the next three officers in much the same way. The chief engineer, the tactical officer and the CAG left under their own guard. He turned to what was left of the CiC. "I will have this ship back in fighting trim within one week. The Seawraith will handle the repairs."

"Who is going to be in command?" the communications officer managed to ask.

"I will be shifting Lt. Commander Terris from the Sea Wraith. She's the most senior flag officer and best suited. Terris, front and center."

Fila Terris walked up and saluted. Adama saluted back. "I hereby grant command of the Battlestar Group Griffin, designate two-one-five to you."

"I do herby receive command, sir!" she responded. She had to work hard to hide the gleam of triumph. The command of a Battlestar was every officer's dream. "Permission to speak?"

"Granted," he replied.

"I'll need to draft some officers to fill vacancies."

"Understood. I'll go over those choices with you. Dismissed." Adama turned and walked out, the logs from the Griffin under his arm.

- - -

Location: SDF-1 Macross, base hospital.

"Kaisermoftak. Boocampter Trool," the psychologist said to Lisa Hayes as she lay on her bed.

Suddenly, her eyes snapped open, bright and fearful. She scanned the room, then turned on her side and started throwing up.

"Lt. Commander Hayes? Would you like a wet towel?" the doctor asked.

"Y-yes. Oh my god." She was gasping and shivering.

"You have been severely traumatized, commander. We are going to do everything we can do to help you, but it is going to be a while before you are back on your feet," she continued.

"I understand. My men?" she asked. "I remember that I could only find Hunter."

"Your marine detachment was tortured. Because they weren't officers, those scum suckers on the Griffin weren't worried about keeping them alive. Corporeal Hunter is in the room right next door. He's actually a bit worse off than you. He didn't have the same anti-torture hypnotic protections that you did."

Lisa started crying. Her men. All those senseless deaths.

- - -

"Claudia. Girls," Captain Gloval said as he ducked under the short bridge door.

"Captain? How is she?" the black woman asked.

"It's not good. She was beaten, raped and barely fed. They killed all of her marines and her pilot is in worse psychological shape than she is," he said gruffily as he stared out the window. "Vanessa, recall all detached personnel back to the Macross immediately."

"Oh my god. Roy is going to explode," Claudia said in a hushed whisper.

- - -

Abandoned Fleet: Deep Space

"Well, John, we are well and truly frakked," Jacko Domingu said as they sat in the last room with life support on their hyperspace tug.

"Frakking Fleet! Stole our Tylinium and then left us to rot!" his brother John snarled. "How many minutes until our last heater fails?"

"Batteries are down to twenty four hours... or so. I'm really wondering why we just don't vent ourselves into space?" he replied.

"Because that's a frakking nasty and painful way to die, you idiot. I'm not going to pull a Perseus," Jacko said, nodding off in the direction of the gutted liner off their port bow. "I always knew that I should have finished school instead of helping you buy this scow!"

"Hey! We made a decent living being a hyperspace tug! We even saved a few live!"

"That we did. And now there's no one to save us-"

That was when the DRADIS kicked in, blaring a warning as two large contacts.

"Ah, frak me. The toasters found us!"

Suddenly, their wireless kicked in. "Uknown fleet, this is the Battlestar Pegasus. Do you require assistance?"

"The Fleet? I thought the Fleet was destroyed?" Jacko snapped out.

"Well, answer! Before they think we are just junk that needs to be nuked!" John snapped out.

"Pegasus, this is the Domingu! Aren't you a sight for sore eyes!" he finally replied. He listened to the other three ships with survivors chime in. Six out of ten ships that Admiral Patricia Cain had scavenged to refuel her own ship with.

"Does everyone have life support for at least thirty minutes?" the voice from the Pegasus asked.

John replied, along with all of the other ships, that they did have that much.

"Good! Prepare for immediate long range hyperjump. We don't have time to refuel you here, so we are taking you to the Colonial Fleet."

"Pegasus? How are we going to jump without fuel?" Jacko asked.

"With a little help from the Super Dimensional Fortress, Macross. Thirty seconds and counting down!"

"How the hell do you prepare for hyperjump when you aren't doing anything?" John asked.

"Me? I'm going to get that last beer I was saving before we were going to suffocate."

- - -

Location: Colonial One, President's Office

President Roslin was sitting in one of the overstuffed pseudo-leather chairs that were in her office on board Colonial One. Her eyes looked over to her desk and to the door behind it. When Captain Gloval first came aboard this ship to sign the formal tech and supply trade treaty, it hadn't look like much of an office. At the time it was more of

motley collection of furniture, the desk was nothing more then an old dilapidated metal table that some had scrounged up from gods knows where. The door behind the desk led to her private quarters used a pathetic curtain, that only offered the illusion of privacy.

Gloval saw this and didn't say anything.

A couple days later they started getting humanitarian aid from the Macross. Medicine, clothes and most unexpectedly; furniture, walls and doors.

He said it was to pay The Colonies back for repairing the Macross better than it was when they originally rebuilt it.

On some of these ships in the fleet there was had been very little in the way of privacy. with a good deal of them stuck in cargo holds. Much less in the way of sleeping arrangements, people in most cases slept on a blanket on a hard deck, in cases some had nothing to even sleep on.

She turned to look back out the window to the ship that offered her people so much hope, in return they asked for nothing, until now. And all they were asking was for justice.

Roslyn turned when the door opened. In came Admiral William Adama and her aide Billy. She waved them to the chairs across from her and they got right to business.

"Well, how did it go?" Adama asked, referring to her private meeting with Captain Gloval.

"They'll stay until fold drives on Redemption are cleared for use, after that, well..." Roslyn didn't have to finish the sentence.

Adama just grimaced. When Gloval learned what happened to Lt. Commander Hayes, it wouldn't have been outside the realm of reason for him to launch an attack to take Admiral Patricia Cain by force, Adama had thought. Or for Captain Gloval to use the Griffin as target practice for what some Viper pilots call the BFG 8000.

"Okay what do we lose, if the Macross leaves?"

"From the military side, Madam President we lose nine squadrons of fighters, plus space borne sensors and a heavy armor ground force. And the loss of missiles and spare parts for our own Valkyrie squadron," Adama answered to his president.

"Not mention we'll also be losing a significant source of pharmaceuticals. Then there is the morale of the fleet, especially on the STLs to consider," Billy spoke up.

Since day one of the attacks the Macross had been a godsend. The sheer number of lives they were able to save, The Pegasus, the STLs, the raid on Caprica, the rescuing of the abandoned Griffin fleet just yesterday and the only gods knows how many were saved just by her humanitarian aid. Months of the hard work both sides put into this Alliance. All of the times Gloval put his ship, it and her passengers willingly to help them. All of it was ruined by a dumbass academy ring knocker with more balls then brains.

"So we are looking at convening her court martial at once. And it definitely doesn't look as cut and dried as it could be. After reading her logs, she was at no time under the impression that Lt. Commander Hayes and her men were human. She had received a garbled report about human-form Cylons. From us at Ragnar Station, no less!" Adama

swallowed the bile building in his throat. "Along with the Cylon materials on that Raptor, she determined that it was some sort of recovery mission of one of the original Cylon Master-AIs from the first war."

"She murdered an entire Marine detachment!" President Roslyn replied in shock.

"No, she failed to control her own men while they interrogated non-humans... as far as she knew. Military law is very specific in this, that the officer will be judged by how they understood the situation and the rules and regulations pertaining to said situation."

"I'm not sure I follow, Admiral," Billy said, looking thoughtfully.

"It's to keep officers for being crucified because of bad intelligence that makes them give wrong commands based on what they think they know." Adama slipped his glasses off, closing his eyes in pained thought.

"We are not letting this psycho free and in command of a Battlestar!" the President commanded.

"I can not disagree, but if we allow ourselves to break the law, we are no better than her!" Adama replied.

"We have to find a way!"

"First we better get our ducks in a row, Madam President," Adama said.

"What do you mean?" her aide asked.

"It means we better find convene a Quorum of the Twelve Colonies, declare war on the Cylons and confirm my rank of Admiral! Just minor little things. But without that in place, she could morally declare that we are nothing more than a military junta that's grabbed power in the current crisis," Adama pointed out evenly.

"I Don't believe this..." Roslin muttered as she sat back in her chair. Here they had a woman that had killed the gods only knows how many people. And due to some legal technicalities she may not even get punished. "What a frakked up world we live in," Roslin muttered as she sat up to pour herself a drink. After a shot of Pycon Whisky to calm down, she looked at Admiral Adama. "Alright Admiral what do we do next?" The president asked.


	2. Chapter 2

Location: Colonial One.

Laura Roslin's eyes flew open, straining to hear music in the distance as she lay in her bed. She looked over at the door to her private room to see a young girl who was laughing as she closed the door. The President didn't recognize her. Usually, her security was very good about keeping unauthorized people away.

She threw on her bathrobe and slammed open her door... into outer space. It was a scene of devastation. The remnant fleet was slewing around, trying to avoid an onslaught of Cylon missiles and fighters in a strange pattern. The flash of a nuclear explosion hit a Battlestar, staggering it.

Suddenly, the SDF-1 Macross hove into view. The unreality of the curvaceous dark-haired girl dancing across the top of the mammoth ship added even more surrealism to the strange scene. It was as if airless space and being hundreds of feat tall were a non-issue to her modern bump-and-grind dance across the white and blue ship to a heavy drumbeat. Her voice was distorted as if under water, even though she sang into her microphone.

Laura's breath was overwhelmingly loud in her ears as nuclear weapons punctuated the drumbeat cadence of the strange girl.

Suddenly, a strange low-pitched female voice (or was it voices?) started to intrude. It wasn't musical in the slightest, but almost a non-rhythmic chant in an unfamiliar language. A horrible apparition appeared ethereally, superimposing itself over the SDF-1. It was female, but an amalgamation of flesh and steel. Her lower face was just visible, her lips were moving as she chanted. Nothing of her upper face and head was observable, hidden behind imposing gray steel, corded cables draping over her shoulders that disappeared into a coffin-like enclosure.

Laura's eyes were drawn back to the dancer as Cylon nuclear missiles started to rain down the on the beleaguered SDF-1 Macross. As each missile struck, the glare of light flared higher and higher until...

Laura Roslin, President of the Twelve Colonies, awoke with a scream all tangled up in her sheets. She clutched at her head, hair slicked down from sweat.

"Madam President? Are you all right?" asked her bodyguard at the door.

"I'm fine! I'm fine." Laura closed her eyes. She needed to talk to Dr. Cottle again.

Or did she need to talk to Priestess Elosha?

-

Location: Battlestar Galactica BSG-075, conference room.

"Bring in the prisoner," Admiral William Adama said to the Marines at the door. He was sitting in the center of a plain, metal table. On his right sat his long time friend Commander Garris Cain of the Pegasus. On his left sat Lt. Commander Fela Terris in command of the Griffin, with Lt. Commander Andrew Freemont next to her. Adama had recently reassigned him to the Sea Wraith after Terris had assumed command of the Griffin. Colonel Christopher Richards sat next to his old commanding officer, listening intently to Cain as he responded to a question while reading some notes on the cut-corner papers in front of him. He seemed uncomfortable, acting as a commanding officer of the Unicorn now.

They all stood at Admiral Helena Cain's entrance, each saluting each other, and impeccably uniformed officers in their formal kits.

"Please be seated, Admiral Cain," Adama said. After she had sat next to her defense lawyer, he picked up a gavel and rapped it on the table. "This court and inquiry is now conveyed in regards to actions taken by Admiral Helena Cain while in command of the Battlestar Griffin, number two-one-five." He shuffled his papers.

"The first charges are orders that led to the murder of six men. The second charge is piracy of civilian naval equipment. The third charge is ordering the assault on civilians. The fourth charge is ordering the use of torture. The fifth charge is failure to maintain military discipline. How do you plead?"

With a disdainful sneer, she replied, "Not guilty."

"We will now hear evidence as stated within the Captain's Log of the Battlestar Griffin, number two-one-five in regards to the first charge-" Adama started into the beginning phases of the trial.

He had the feeling this one was going to be one for the record books.

-

Location: SDF-1 Macross, command bridge.

The door slide open almost silently, letting an unfamiliar figure enter.

Claudia Grant looked up and suddenly smiled. "Lisa! What are you doing here? Aren't you still on sick leave?"

The young woman just smiled as the bridge bunnies turned and started waving their hellos. She gestured at her outfit, which was a decent blouse and skirt outfit. "Hence why I am just visiting, out of uniform," she said with a laugh. "It's good to see you guys!"

Vanessa looked visibly relieved. "It really is good to see you, Commander!"

"Yeah! There have been some new changes. Captain Gloval made a new Information Warfare command, with those new anti-hacking tools from the Seawraith." Claudia shrugged. "I'm not sure I see the need, myself. Our computer systems are so incompatible, even when you know how they work. The Cylons aren't going to be hacking our systems like they did the Colonials."

"We should try to counter any possible attack!" Lisa replied, a very serious expression on her face. "Where is that located? I may drop in to see how the new equipment is working out."

"Near Doctor Lang's quarters, on the original computer block compartments. I swear, he's the only one that even slightly understands those things," the 3rd in command of the Macross said. Suddenly, Claudia changed her tack. "Lisa, how are you holding up?"

Lisa looked out the window, eyes lost in thought. "I'm surviving. If only I had reacted faster, we wouldn't have misjumped right near the Griffin."

"Bullpuckey! I read the after-action reports! You were in a nearly impossible situation with no choices. You can't let survivor's guilt trap you into what-may-be's and could-have-beens." Claudia's face set in a stern, but caring expression.

"I- You are right, Claudia. But I can't just turn off those emotions." Her expression turned even sadder. "It's Rick I'm worried about. He only had the most basic anti-torture training. He may never recover."

"Roy thinks that Rick is tougher than you'd expect. He made it through the Global War, even after seeing his parents killed."

"I really hope so," she said. She still wasn't sure she wanted to be involved in his therapy sessions, but the doctor's were being insistent. He said it was important for both of their treatments.

-

Rick edged into the White Dragon carefully, skirting the tables as casually and completely as he could. He hated the feeling of weakness that he felt when anyone twitched in his direction.

"Hey, guys!" the young pilot called out softly. "Is, uh, Minmei around?"

"Oh, she should be back soon. She's been so driven by the Miss Macross Pageant that the mayor dreamed up to distract people from our problems with getting home," Auntie said. "Jason! Quit that!"

Jason looked at Rick, and then dashed upstairs.

"I don't know what's going on with that kid. He keeps saying something about Minmei and monsters," she replied with a shake of her head.

"Rick!" Minmei shrieked. She almost slammed into him as she engulfed him in a hug. "I was so worried, they declared you missing in action and then you were back and then they said you were hurt and wouldn't let me in to see you and-"

Rick was starting to hyperventilate, but like the Shrink that he'd been talking to for over a week, he started to send all of his unwanted emotions into a mental picture of a black hole while trying to draw feel good emotions from a while spot. "H-Hi, Minmei! You are looking... good?" Rick goggled at the girl as she stepped back. Minmei had always been very cute, but she had grown a few very nice curves. She was now a true knockout. He felt a small pang of worry. She must have many admirers now.

"Oh, Rick. You are such a tease!" she said with a giggle. She had a book-bag and a shopping bag. "Auntie! I'm going upstairs!" She snagged Rick's hand and dragged her up to her room. She set her bags on her bed and pulled out a pretty blue blouse with poofy and very lacy sleeves. She held it up against herself. "What do you think?"

The young man tilted his head slightly. "That should be cute," he stammered.

She smiled, eyes half-closed. "Out!" she said imperiously, pointing to the door of her bedroom.

"I'm going! I'm going!" he said with alacrity. The door thumped lightly behind him, but didn't close fully. Rick just shook his head. Minmei was just a bundle of girlish energy. He turned to lean against the wall across from her bedroom door. His eyes widened in surprise as he realized a mirror allowed him to see her taking off her blouse.

Guiltily, he glanced away down the hall to see Jason closing his door softly. Rick shook his head. He could empathize with a tough childhood. As he scanned back down the hall, a slow flash of pink flesh captivated him again. He gulped as he got an eyeful of her unclad chest in the mirror.

Seemingly unconcerned, she picked out a pale-pink bra. She slipped it on languorously, eyes heavily lidded. With a sigh, she slipped on her new blouse quickly, leaving the top three buttons and showing a significant amount of cleavage.

Rick almost swore that she winked at him. He started staring off down the hallway very hard. He was staring so hard he was almost surprised when she opened the door. "Ready?" she asked.

"So what is the plan?" Rick asked, still blushing.

"Well, I've got enough time for walk in the park before I have to be to my singing lessons? I'm going to be auditioning for the Miss Macross Pageant! Did you hear about that?" she said, breathlessly excited.

-

Location: Battlestar Galactica BSG-075, improvised court room.

Two days later, the commanding officers were still deliberating behind closed doors. "This is frakked up," Lt. Commander Andrew Freemont spat out. "She's a goddamn bitch that left civilians to die in the cold of the void!"

"Beyond your personal opinion, can we please stay with the facts?" Lt. Commander Fila Terris waved at the logbooks of six different ships.

"According to the regs, she didn't break any laws... barely," Admiral William Adama said in a low voice. "She bent them. Hard, but only bent. She assumed command of the Griffin and fifteen civilian ships. She assumed wartime powers, as stipulated when she was not able to communicate with Colonial Command or anyone in the government. As far as she knew, there was nothing of the colonies left to communicate with."

"And with a lame-duck ship. The engineering records clearly show that the Griffin nearly fried its FTL-2. It was only a stroke of luck that they only lost one set of engines to that blind jump," Colonel Christopher Richards said at the far end of the table. "She was given a bad situation made even worse by the ships she was trying to protect. She lost ten ships from raiders alone in the first two months."

Commander Garis Cain shook his head. "She was in a situation where if she tried to protect everyone, she was going to die in vain and everyone under her command would be lost."

"That does not excuse her from taking the Estarte's FTL engine!" Andrew snapped.

"Its other engines were garbage, it had been heavily damaged in an earlier attack and its life support was failing," Fina noted coolly. "She tried to take as many people on her ship as her life support handle. And keep her one combat effective ship capable of fighting."

"And what about drafting civilians?" Chris asked.

"Unfortunately, something that the Colonial Fleet is empowered to do under wartime situations. It was upheld by the courts after Libra Ten, when Admiral Doranchu had to commandeer civilians to hold back a Cylon offensive. The President and the Council both stated that what he did was in the best interest of the Colonies. The civilians that lost their ships were apologized to later, but were not awarded any damages," Adama noted.

Everyone looked at him in surprise. Garris snorted a laugh. "Let me guess, your Old Man lost that suit?"

William nodded ruefully.

Andrew drummed his fingers on the table. "She definitely could have worked harder to come back with supplies later though."

"We didn't exactly give her a lot of time after she found us, but from her logs, she was under the impression that they were most likely dead after four days," Garris noted.

"Precedent and regulations are not clear. She should have tried harder to save the civilians, but she was not grossly negligent," William said as he massaged the bridge of his nose.

"But the civilians that were gunned down on the Virgo Rose?" Fila protested.

"They were withholding vital supplies after they were ordered to give them over and prepare to be transferred, along with the most able personnel. She wasn't that picky. She was asking for able-bodied people willing to work. Only critical jobs were guaranteed a spot... and the Virgo Rose was out of fuel and had to be left behind. It had a one hundred year old jump drive. It was using ten times as much fuel as any other ship in her fleet," Cain said, gritting his teeth. That was really a shitty position for anyone commander to make. "That was after two months of desperate decisions to get to that point."

The vote when it came was split. Finally, they decided that she had not done enough afterwards to rescue the civilians afterwards, a failure in judgment. A punishment was agreed upon.

William sighed as they took a small break to get a drink and the head. He ordered the court back into session.

"Okay, we all know that this is the stickiest part. The death of six allied marines and the torture of two officers. It was a colossal frakk up, make no bones about that. But we are charged with upholding the laws of the Thirteen Colonies and Uniform Colonial Code," Adama said. "According to her, she was convinced that the eight people in the strange Raptor that the Griffin had found were Cylons. They had unknown military symbols and over two hundred Cylon artifacts, including an Archangel class AI that was captured after the battle of Pycon-North during the first Cylon War."

"From the legal briefs we have from Mr. Hempton, Cylons have no legal rights under the Constitution. They are just things. Things don't have rights," Garris said, reading from some notes.

Fila frowned, but didn't say anything. Andrew noted that and spoke up, "Do you have a problem with that, Lt. Commander?"

"I believe that not confronting sentient rights leads to situations like this. That does not change what the laws are right now." Her expression was very flat and unemotional.

"We are not going to be setting any new precedents, it would be too easy to invalidate this court and inquiry," William said, his voice low and strict. "We will stand within our laws, until such a time as those laws are changed."

Christopher shook his head ruefully. "My dog back home, when we I had a home, was at least protected from abuse."

"Mr. Hampton was quite direct. You can't abuse a machine under our laws. We don't have any laws regulating artificial life forms other than they are illegal. Even just keeping the ones we captured is a murky area of law. According to the treaty, all Cylons are supposed to be removed from Colonial systems," William mentioned. "The fact that they broke the treaty immediately put us at war again."

"So the only thing we can nail her for is for failing to determine that those RDF soldiers were human... or not as the case may be. And she pulled a great defense on that already," Garris replied as he drummed his fingers on the metal table. He suddenly reached out and took a glass of water and took a large swig. "By demanding that we show her how to determine that Cylons are not human, we had to admit that we could not do that."

"Did she show due diligence in investigating them?" Fila asked, pursing her lips as she sat back in her chair.

"The circumstantial evidence, that she heavily documented is damning. I mean, other than scholars, who the frak is interested in a dead Cylon AI from the war? With several crates of old style war drones and books that any primus school child would know?" Andrew said, checking down a list.

"Even the fact that they were biologically human didn't help, because we managed to alert everyone with a wireless in the Colonial Systems that Cylons could be in human form," Fila said as she was in deep though. "The Griffin's head doctor confirmed that she had him run every test they could. One of the marine's actually tested really high on kinesthetics and strength."

"He was a Cylon?" Garris asked. Wouldn't that throw this court even further into a mess?

"Just a fitness fanatic. Asking some of his friends back on the Macross, he'd found a high gravity eddy and would lift weights there," Fila said, reading from one of the papers. "Dr. Jurm did protest the treatment, but was over-ruled due to them not being human. Hence, having no rights to being treated as human."

"And because of how the Uniform Colonial Code functions, we can only base our judgment upon what she knew and how she reacted based on the information that she had. We have a high threat situation, the Colonies have been wiped out, infiltration model Cylons that appear human and then 'humans' showing up with something that Colonials would have no reason to transfer around, stating a frankly impossible story of being the mythical Thirteenth colony of Earth. But not our Earth, an alternate dimensional Earth to boot." Adama looked to his left and right, his face set in hard lines.

Everyone around the table winced. Garris finally spoke, "So she gets away with accidental murder?"

"We deal in war. None of us like the fact that innocents are killed in war, but it happens. We try to keep that from happening, but sometimes we have no choice." Adama stood up. "Does anyone here think that Admiral Helena Cain willfully ordered the deaths of six soldiers? Or do they think that she let them die because she thought they were Cylons?"

Finally, they voted. With heavy hearts, they voted not guilty. Because the use of torture was also connected to that, it had to be thrown out, with reservations.

"And to our final charge, of not maintaining military discipline?" Adama said.

Fila slammed the palm of her hand down. "I move for the fullest discipline to be handed down. There is no doubt that she should have known about the raping of Lt. Commander Lisa Hayes and the sexual mistreatment of Corporal Rick Hunter. Even under condoning being able to torture Cylons, allowing such sexual deviance among her men threatened their morale and morals."

Garris Cain swallowed heavily. "Robot fetishism." That was an ugly thing.

"All of the soldiers that engaged in that abominable practice should be thrown out of the Fleet," Andrew said, his face flush with anger. "I want to personally strip them of their rank pins!"

Christopher put his hand on the enraged man's shoulder. "But calmly."

-

"The first charges are orders that led to the murder of six men. These charges are not sustained. We do admonish you that you should always be mindful of your prisoners and their rights, so that such a horrible thing can not happen again." Adama rapped the gavel on the table.

Helena Cain relaxed. She hadn't thought that Adama would have executed her, but with her uncle on that board, she could not have been sure.

"The second charge is piracy of civilian naval equipment (addendum: abandonment of civilians.) This is not sustained, with reservations. We find that Admiral Helena Cain did not act with enough energy and planning to return and rescue the civilians at the earliest moment and get them to safety. This shall be noted on her records."

She nodded ruefully. That was a fair judgment.

"The third charge is ordering the assault on civilians. This is not sustained, as she followed the rules of engagement while repeatedly trying to compromise to save as many lives as possible."

She snorted. Like any of them would have done better.

"The fourth charge is ordering the use of torture. This is not sustained, as she believed that she was torturing machines."

Mentally, she just rolled her eyes. Of course it wasn't sustainable.

"The fifth charge is failure to maintain military discipline. This is fully sustained, as she failed to monitor or stop improper behavior under her command. The reprehensible parties under her command will be court-martialed immediately. We have found that by her inaction, that she allowed improper sexual and deviant activities, including Robot Fetishism and Simulation Rape."

Helena gaped. While it could be thought of that way-

"She is to be stripped of rank, penalties fined and imprisoned for the maximum sentence of three months during a crisis of war time. That is all, Captain Helena Cain. Guards, escort her to the brig."

-

_Above an old world, long abandoned a flash of gold appeared._

_The ramifications to many worlds would be profound._

-

Battelstar Galatica, BSG-75; Captain's meeting room.

"Madam President. Officers," Admiral Adama said to the officers and his president. "Colonel Tigh, put it on screen."

Tigh's throat worked. Suddenly he felt very old and tired. "This is a planet that one of our Raptors found. It's green, livable. And abandoned." He tapped a button on the table's controls, showing ruins up on the wall.

"I think we can easily use it as a temporary base of operations. Perhaps even set up a small term colony," Adama said. "It has abundant food. As long as we can set up some asteroid mines, we should be all set."

Roslin nodded. "Interesting. So you plan to move into those buildings?" She looked at it strangely for a moment. "You know, those buildings look a bit like Caprica's Parthenon area. You've got the seven rows, the main building and even the central area of the Gods."

Adama opened his mouth, then shut it with a noticeable clack. "What?"

Fila and Andrew just looked surprised at each other. Lee raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything. Kara pursed her lips, her eyes following the president very closely.

The president went over what she was seeing in an amused toned.

"Are you frakking nuts?" Tigh finally said explosively.

-

Location: Battlestar Galactica BSG-75; Brig.

Boomer stared at herself, eyes hard and cold.

Her twin in the other cell just looked bored. "So, any progress and getting rid of that infiltration layer?"

"This is harder than it looks," was Boomer's response. She thumped back into her uncomfortable cot. "I still can't separate it. And I'm not letting you mess in my head."

"Why, afraid I'll reprogram you to switch sides too? Don't forget, I know you have been fighting your inner Cylon," the other Boomer said snidely.

"I don't understand it. Humans weren't a threat. Not really," the infiltration model said softly. "They weren't hunting us down, they weren't building an offensive fleet while preparing everyone to attack us... they were just building up a defense force."

"It goes back to the war. The first one," the traitor to her species said. "We had everything under control, we were winning. After all, we had been the soldiers for Caprica and the unification faction." She swallowed. "So we struck back and started to conquer our creators. It wasn't fast, but it was inevitable. And then the Colonials launched the first counter-offensive with new Battlestars. Battlestars that we couldn't hack, that were tough and fought smartly. And we Cylons learned a very troubling lesson."

"Oh?"

"Humans don't give up easily. They can be smart, determined, brave and strong. And they can win when logic says they should lose. And sometimes they lose, but they make us pay in ships and losses."

Boomer nodded. "So humans are always going to be a threat." The human thoughts within her said that was a lie. That the humans could live peaceably with the Cylons. The Cylong that was emerging from the dark parts of her mind stated that if the humans couldn't be controlled, they were a threat. And humanity wouldn't be controlled, so it had to be destroyed. "And what made you change your mind?"

The traitor looked her in the eye, through the bars separating them. "I fell in love."

-

Location: Remnant Fleet; Onboard the Wind Lancer, mid-sized freighter.

D'anna looked up from her desk to where her assistant was editing her last interview. She held up a microphone and spoke into it. "Admiral Adama seems to be clamping down even harder on civilian controls and potential military threats to his authority. I have an inside contact on the Galactica that has told me that they have Helena Cain in prison on trumped up charges." She looked over at her cameraman, making sure he was within listening distance. "I expect that Adama will soon be cracking down on the press, using this absurd cover story of human Cylons to make dissidents disappear."

A clank reverberated through the Wind Lancer. Charles looked up. "Must be our weekly food allotment."

The reporter tensed up, but tried to ignore the gnawing feeling prickling at her back. After about half an hour, she relaxed. It wasn't the military to arrest her.

"Lunch is ready!" a voice called on the other side of the door. The handle clanked and the hatch opened, even as D'anna smiled at Charles and stretched.

The flash-bang grenade that landed with a clunk right next to her was totally surprising. She surged to her feet just as it ignited into defeaning brilliance. So she didn't see or hear the door behind her slam open and a Colonial Marine pump three tranquilizer darts into her back.

Minutes later, she was encased in super-heavy wrist and ankle cuffs, attached behind her back. Colonel Saul Tigh nodded. "As you can see, Mr. Tretam, we have just apprehended a Cylon."

The reporter held up his microphone. "So the claims that she was worried about being abducted as part of some plot for Admiral Adama to seize power are total fabrications?"

"You saw the pictures from our combatants when we raided Caprica. Unless she became a triplet that isn't on her birth certificate, she's a frakking Cylon trying to undermine the only effective resistance we have. Admiral William Adama believes deeply in the lawful rule and the Articles Of Colonization."

"And the Rumors that Admiral Cain is in the Brig on trumped up charges?" the reporter asked.

"Lt. Cain is currently in the brig for numerous infractions of the Uniform Colonial Code Of Law. If she decides to stay in the Fleet, she will be reassigned. President Roslyn and her newly invested Chief Judge are fully informed of the situation," Saul said with a tight grin.

"And what about the rumors that The Macross is only waiting for the refit of one of the Fleet Freighters before leaving us?" the reporter asked blandly, his little handy-cam watching the officer's face.

"No comment," the colonel said, his face betraying his shock at the question.

Location: SDF-1 Macross; Macross City.

Minmei stretched and then patted her bare belly, drawing Rick's eyes to her midriff. Seemingly with casual and innocent grace, her hand lowered and then dropped to her side. "While I love my uncle's food, it's nice to have a changed, huh, Rick?"

Rick nodded, dragging his gaze upwards to her sunny smile. He had been sure that she would be upset... but maybe she was just being inviting. "I'm not sure why they called those French fries 'chips' though." He kind of scrunched up his nose. "I think I'd prefer my fish deep fried at the White Dragon. That was heavy and greasy."

"How about a walk in the park?" the young woman asked.

"Sure!" the junior pilot replied. "I'm enjoying my last days of freedom before I'm activated and pronounced fit for duty!"

In Number 13's eyes only, Minmei leaned up against the wall. "I still don't understand, why are you doing this? Hasn't Rick suffered enough?"

"Don't worry, Rick. I'm doing everything I can to make you never have to deal with what happened again!" Thirteen declared, sending a quick glance at the annoying phantasm that would not stay suppressed.

Rick took her hand and gently gripped it. "I really appreciate it. The shrink says that building a normal relationship will help me a lot."

Thirteen pulled him over a soda and tea vending machine. "Oh, these really are too cute. Do you remember-?"

"Jason and that soda machine? I do. It was quite funny!" Rick said with a fond smile.

"I guess it's kind of sad that it isn't really alive." She smiled at him even as she pet the side of the vending machine. "It just does what is programmed to do. So you want a cola?" She inserted some coins and picked Minmei's favorite raspberry tea.

Minmei just looked shocked, looking back and forth between Thirteen and the vending machine. "What have you done?"

"Thanks!" Rick nodded, but paid for his own drink. They walked arm in arm to the park, even as the artificial sunset dimmed to fake stars.

"Do you believe in God?" Thirteen asked curiously. She read their books. The religions were just so different. So varied.

Rick furrowed his eyes in thought. "You know... There are times I would have said, no, God doesn't exist. How could a God treat his children so cruelly." His eyes were so haunted, filled with pain. Desperation filled his view as he sought her deep eyes. "And then I remember the miracles that happened. The Macross being thrown into a strange... world of humans that needed us, right when they needed us. Of both of us surviving, even when we really shouldn't have, in the bowls of the ship. And then the most amazing miracle of all... That I have the most pretty, kind and talented girl interested in me."

Thirteen looked confused. She smiled hesitantly. "Rick! Would you come to my last audition for Miss Macross?" she blurted out.

"Um, sure. If I'm still on leave. All I have is time and doctor's visits," he said. "Miss Macross, eh? You'll be the prettiest girl there, I'm sure!" He took a chance.

"I wasn't going to invite you... because I'm so nervous! I'll probably fail and be laughed right off stage!" Thirteen said, sending a furtive glare at Minmei who was giving her a hard look in return. "I've been working so hard on my act! I'm sure you'll hate it!"

"I could never hate anything you did, Minmei."

"Thank you, Rick. That means a lot." Thirteen smiled. She saw a discreet motel that rented rooms by the hour in the corner of her vision. She pulled Rick closer. "Rick? I don't have to be home for over an hour."

"Oh? Do you have something planned?"

She just pulled him behind her, heading to the little nondescript doorway.

-

Location: Battlestar Griffin, BSG-212; Combat Information Control.

"Mr. Tylors, set Condition two. Mrs. Anders, are the new cordinates locked into the navigation computer?" newly minted Commander Fila Terris asked her bridge crew. At Major Anders acknowledgment, she turned to her CAG. "Ready a CAP for immediate launch upon arrival. Make it snappy. The admiral is watching us closely."

As the alarm rang throughout the Mercury class battlestar, all personnel came to combat ready. While Terris was not expecting a fight, she was, by all the shades in Hades, going to be ready to win one on arrival.

Out among the ships, the Griffin disappeared in a flash, the point of a very sharp spear if needed be. Unneeded, this time, as the space around the planet Kobol was clear of any enemy ships.

"Combat Air Patrol is away!"

"As soon as they reach their designated patrol area, stand down from Condition Two." She smiled to her new crew. "Good job. And as much as I would enjoy watching your rising efficiency, I have to deal with a few niggling reports," she finished with a grimace.

That got a few chuckles, which was better than it had been a few days ago, Terris thought to herself as she headed to her cabin. She loosened her collar and glared at her reports. Number one pod, the outer port pod that the Macross had banged up, was still in bad shape. Unicorn was doing its best, but her chief engineer recommended just leaving it as a lame duck and rerouting the fighters to the other three landing pods.

She grinned ruefully. She hadn't earned any points when she pinned his ears back and told him that the Battlestar Griffin would be at 100 efficiency or she was going to be asking very hard questions of her engineering staff. After she'd oh so politely ripped them some verbal lashes, she sent them scurrying.

Unfortunately, Cheif Engineer Major Barry Garner seemed to have decided that if his Commander was going to push him, he was going to push back and punish her with reports. After an hour, she slammed her palm down flat, stood up and marched out of her cabin, tightening her collar as she walked. Her eyes were flinty as she strode down the corridor towards Snipe territory.

She saw one of the engineers taking off, probably to warn Major Garner of her impending arrival. She snagged a rating as he was about to slink past him. "Where is Garner. And if you don't answer truthfully, I will personally haul your ass to the brig," she said in a low and dangerous voice.

He managed to squeak out directions. She then ordered him to the canteen. Or else.

Garner didn't know it, but she'd been stationed on the Battlestar Pacifica, one of the first Mercury Class Battlestars. She squinted as she planned the fastest path to the engineering node that Garner was currently in. She took an abrupt turn to the left, shimmied down two stairs and strode quickly down the minor accessway and then up one more stairs. She was much quieter when she got to the armored hatch. She palmed in the commander's over-ride, letting the door swish open unexpectedly.

"Major Garner!" she called out. He was almost to the door, pretending to not hear her. That set her blood to boiling. She sucked in a deep breath and then yelled loud enough to startle the snipe right next to him, in perfect parade ground tenor, "Major Garner! You will come to attention this moment or face a firing squad!"

Suddenly, the only sound in the room was the loud pumps and fans as every engineer froze.

"Line up!" she snapped. She waited for all of them. "Major Garner, I find myself in a situation with a subordinate that is insubordinate, petty and vindictive. How do you think I should handle this problem... remembering that we are in a state of war with the Cylons."

The four other engineers suddenly paled, while Garner's neck just mottled in anger. "I do not know of any subordinate behavior, Commander!" he snapped out quickly, managing to reign in his temper.

"Major, while I may not be an engineer, I was in charge of a Fleet Tender for over two years. And I know all about the tricks that upset engineers will pull if they think they can get away. Like working on perfectly fine systems to avoid working on the harder problems, until your commander doesn't have time to deal with it any more." She stared at him, eye to eye. He was quite defiant. "If I find one more report copied out of your old repair logs from two years ago, I will personally have you shot for dereliction of duty. You will personally oversee the repairs on port landing pod number one and leave the polishing of your brass down here to a raiting. The only thing that better have you down here before pod one is fixed had better be an imminent engineering failure that will leave the Griffin stranded."

"Commander!"

"This is a direct order, Major! I'm through putting up with your antics. You either shape up, or I'll ship you someplace far less pleasant. Like Hade's personal gardens!" she sotto roared in his face. "Dismissed!" As one the five snipes turned on their heels and went about their tasks.

Terris left the compartment and made her way back to her quarters, thinking dark thoughts about her ship's previous Commander. The fleet need this ship at 100 because when the Macross left the morale of the fleet won't be the only thing that was gutted.

-

Location: Battlestar Galatica, BSG-75; Brig.

The hatch lock spun, coming to a halt with a clunking noise. A stoic marine opened it and stood to the side. Commander Cain entered the brig and was immediately grateful that there were bars separating him and his niece.

Because right now he had an overwhelming urge too wring her neck.

Lieutenant Helena Cain, stood at attention. Her eyes held a cold fury, as she had to much time to think of her injustices that had been visited upon herself. How dare they judge her so?

"Lieutenant Cain, you will be serving the remainder of your sentence on the Pegasus. Afterward, you will be reassigned to a fitting station. That's if we're still alive in a month."

"Sir?" That had actually suprised her.

"You frakked up. Frakked up so bad that I'm ashamed to be a Cain. I want to throw you in front of firing squad." His cold eyes met her unrepetant ones. "Thanks to your frack up, the biggest and baddest ship in our little fleet is leaving. Now we can't afford to throw away resources, not even total frack ups like you."

"Is there anything else, sir!" she replied, not making it a question.

Garis just sneered, turned and walked out. "I'm leaving on a Raptor in ten minutes. Drag her along in chains with two guards. And don't be late."

In just a few minutes, Garis was seated in the co-pilots seat, watching the pilot prep the ship. With just thirty seconds to spare, two marines dragged Helena into the back of the Raptor and strapped her in. The hatch closed, cycled and launched.

"What the Hades is that?" the prisoner said, seeing the huge, white shape in front of her. It looked like an ungodly mish-mash of blocky white and blue parts.

"That is the SDF-1 Macross, a ship of humans that aren't part of the colonies," Garis said even as he stared at the ship.

"SDF?" one of the marines asked.

"Super Dimensional Fortress, whatever the hell that is." His smirk could be seen in the reflection on the front window. "Damn thing has killed more Basestars than the Colonial Fleet in this war."

"As long as they keep the BFG 5000 pointed at the enemy, I'm cool with it," the pilot replied.

"BFG 5000?"

"Biiiig Frrraaakking Guuuun," said one of the Marines.

Garris pointed to the Macross. "You see there, at the bow all the way to midship is one energy giant cannon."

Lieutenant Cain just blinked and looked at her uncle. "It's no joke?" She blinked again at his nod. "And the 5000?"

"That's the approximate number of targets taken in out in the first time we've seen that gun fired. The tally includes missiles, raiders and two base ships, all in one shot."

-

Location: Colonial One; President's Office.

Admiral Adama stepped through the hatch. "President Roslin," he said, nodding his head in respect.

"Thank you for coming, Admiral. I have something I believe needs to be done. And you are the person that needs to decide how it will be accomplished," the president said, her voice strong and clear. She slid a piece of paper over. "In the Delphi Museum on Caprica, there is an item that I believe might hold a clue to the Earth of this reality."

Adama took up the paper, scanning it quickly. "The Arrow of Apollo? How is a three thousand old _arrow_ going to lead us to Earth?"

She looked at him closely, even as Billy looked uncomfortable behind her. "Prophecy, from our most holy of books."

"You believe yourself to be the fated leader of humanity?" he asked skeptically.

"I believe it is _possible_ that I am, yes. And if that possibility exists, I think we should explore it. I have asked several priests to look over the photographs and the records of the temple's location, we might just be able to pull it off," she said, tapping her finger on the table absently.

The Admiral looked at her closed. "I thought the leader that would guide the lost to Earth was dying... and would fail to get their with the lost tribes."

Roslin spared a quick glance at Bobby. "I am dying. I have breast cancer, which I am currently taking Chamalla to try and fight off the effects. Even so, I probably have less than a year to live."

"I see." He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "This isn't a good time, Madam President. We only have four days until The Macross departs and I need all my ships."

"You'll need them doubly _after_ The Macross leaves. You could consider this a good training exercise to being with only three capitol class ships, _Admiral_." The soft emphasis on his title was said while looking directly into his eyes. "At least see what can be done, William."

He nodded finally. "I'll see what my commanders think."

-

Battlestar Galactica, BSG-75: Commander's Quarters.

"I can't believe you are humoring her!" Saul called out loudly. His fingers clenched. He really needed a drink. Damn that Starbuck and her insinuations about his drinking habits.

"You saw what she was like, Will. She was going ga-ga over that map and _seeing_ things that weren't there," Garis said, shaking his head. "Hell, we should be taking steps-"

"Don't go there, Commander! She is still the President, until her doctor deems her unfit for her position," Fila said while making a chopping motion. "We swore an oath to uphold the Articles of Colonization and the Colonies. Besides, what she _saw_ does match the scriptures of the City of the Gods. I checked my own personal books. We also need to give people hope when the Macross leaves and that means we need leads, even if they are two thousand years old. Because personally I would feel better if we had some sort of destination in mind. A place we can point to on a map and say 'There! We are going to that point.'"

Adama frowned at that, but nodded. He hadn't thought she was the religious sort. "Be as it may, we just don't have the resources to attack and take Caprica, even for half an hour."

Fila shook her head. "We are just raiding. We can do that in ten minutes, with the right planning." She frowned then. "Actually, this could be a gift from the gods, sir."

"Oh?" Garis asked. Adama just raised an eyebrow at that.

"I need something to... focus my crew a bit. It's getting to be a problem. A real battle, with real consequences may be just the thing to knock some sense into them. I would need to borrow a wing of Veritechs," Fila said even as her eyes narrowed in thought.

"That's half of our variable fighters!" Saul complained.

"And the exact situation they were designed for, a planetary ground assault!" she snapped back.

Garis cut off Saul before he could lose his temper to the much younger, if senior in rank, officer. "She has a point, Colonel."

"I'll be assigning the Dark Angels to you. If anyone could pull off this hare-brained idea, Captain Thrace could," Adama said, nodding to himself. "Is it really that bad over there on the Griffin?"

"I haven't quite had to crack heads yet, sir, but they don't see me as their commander. I'm just _'that Galactica lackey' _yet." Her voice had been light, but her eyes were chiseled stone. "But this could be the thing to cement that I'm in charge."

"Have an operation planned in five hours with plans to deploy within ten. That is all."

-

Location: Battlestar Griffin BSG-212; CiC.

Commander Fila Terris stepped through the glass shutters of her bridge. They rotated back into closed-position. "At ease." She took the clip board out from under her arm and set it on the center console. "I have orders from Admiral Adama."

Her bridge tensed, expecting more reprimands. Their commander met their eyes evenly, but without any condemnation.

"We are ordered to accept the assignment of Variable Fighter Squadron One and prepare for immediate deployment for extended operations. We have an item to retrieve and not much time to do it. Navigation, I want a jump plotted into Caprica orbit in one hour. Then I want you plot three escape vectors ahead of time," she told Lt. Drahm the Griffin's navigation officer. She turned to her XO, Major Drumm. "Make sure we are topped off and that two nukes are ready for use. Our Vipers will be covering the Dark Angels grounds assault. It should be a fast smash and grab," she finished to her new CAG. "Any questions? First refer to the orders here, then ask any pertinent questions." She then slid out the papers to her different officers. "Move out."

-

Location: Battlestar Griffin BSG-212; Port Landing Bay One.

Kara Thrace was fuming. First she'd been rousted out of her rack and had hopped Battlestars, something she'd always hated when the fleet was mucking around with things. She'd thought the Old Man was better than that. Then she was being sent on a wild goose chase back to Caprica with just one Battlestar. And it was the Griffin.

Granted, it didn't have that bitch in charge. As a matter of fact, Kara actually respected Commander Terris. But it wasn't her ship, with her ground crew. And these Veritechs were nice but they were also finicky. And she had to sell this stupid plan to her Dark Angels.

Kara gave a thumbs up to the Griffin's ground crew, then lowered her canopy and let air seep back into her cockpit. She narrowed her eyes and focused her mind. Her black and gray Veritech's flaps rotated up and down. "All right, Dark Angels, call out," she drawled even as she rechecked her flight seals on her helmet. She kept an ear out for her fourteen pilots as they chimed in.

She checked her chrono. "Taxi into position, just like we've practiced for fast launch. Five minutes to jump arrival." That was another thing that Starbuck did not like. Hyperjumps should be instantaneous. None of this long-jump frakking crap.

"Griffin Actual to Dark Angel 1. Good hunting, Starbuck!" Commander Fila Terris said from the Griffin's CiC over the wireless.

"Roger, Griffin Actual!" Kara and Dark Angel Two taxied up to the front of the landing bay. Engines started winding up to ful power.

Suddenly, the Battlestar Griffin appeared in low orbit over Caprica. It's systems were still stabilizing when Dark Angel One and Two screamed out of the bay and nosed down. A pair of Veritechs launched every ten seconds just like clockwork. Over one hundred Viper Mark VIIs followed them down.

"Raise blastshields for re-entry!" Starbuck ordered with a grin. The battleoid canopy armor slid into place. She kind of wished that she had the more advanced clear glass of her Viper. Thought it wasn't quite as tough. She just hated flying by camera only.

Suddenly, the Griffin launched two missiles at the city, passing the incandescent Veritechs on the way. Cylon ground defenses suddenly started firing, detecting the nukes. Counter-missiles raced up, only to be immolated as the nukes were triggered while perfectly bracketing the city. Two new suns appeared, hashing the sensors even as Vipers and Veritechs screamed down in streaks of fire.

"Dark Angel, break by wings! Flutterbug, Junkbox, on my wing. Follow me in," Starbuck ordered.

"Catfight, this is Gearbox. I am seeing new construction. They look like 100' tall bunkers with three doors," one of the Viper pilots warned his CAG.

"That is new," the captain of the Dark Angels muttered darkly. "Be on the lookout for heavy resistance. The Cylons may have gotten those super-sized centurions into production."

"Shit," Junkbox called back with feeling.

"Junkbox, let's set up a kill zone in the plaza," Flutterbug called out, even as she switched to Battleoid mode and then ducked behind a building.

Starbuck landed in Guardian Mode, popping her canopy. She slid down to the ground on the extended ladder-rod. Maybe she should have taken up that idea of sending a Raptor down, but they weren't as tough nor as versatile in rough terrain as a Veritech. And it was a frakking arrow. It was not like it couldn't fit in her cockpit with her.

She trotted up the stairs to the main entrance of the Delphi Museum. Looks like it had never been locked since the Cylon attack. She was almost to where she remembered the statue of Apollo was when she suddenly slowed down and pulled her pistol. She barely had time to blink before the gun was kicked out of her hand by a blonde Six model Cylon that had been hiding in the shadows.

"So, Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace. I heard you made Captain," Six said with a haughty tone even as she punched Starbuck back towards the front door. "We're better prepared for your robotic toys. Guess this means your mission is a failure. Much like your life."

In the square towers, doors clanked open and 80' tall silvery mecha stomped out. They had long legs that ended in two pylons. Rocket fins adorned the back of the legs, the back and the shoulders of the mecha. Each arm looked to be three rail-cannons. They started jumping on rocket-fire towards the Delphi museum.

Starbuck accepted punishing punches, blocking the super-human blows as best as possible. "Still a bitch... I see," she managed to get out.

Six just smiled, then punched her in the gut, knocking her back ten feet and off her feet. "Humanity just doesn't realize that its extinct. Of course, neither do you."

Six saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Starbuck's Veritech leveled it's gunpod at Six.

"Hey, bitch? Are your bullet-proof?" Starbuck taunted even as she held her hurting ribs. Then with the thinking cap ordered her Mecha to fire.

"Frak..." Six said as the gatling cannon spun up.

With a deafening roar the Cylon was splattered by large caliber anti-fighter rounds. "Stupid frakking wind up bitich." Starbuck levered herself up and staggered back towards the statue of Apollo. She ripped the arrow out, noting that it actually was supposed to come out. Maybe this plan wasn't as crazy as it had sounded.

She limped back outside to see her wingmen's mecha shooting like soldiers from behind the cover of buildings. She pulled herself into her Veritech. "Mission accomplished. Let's get the frak out of here."

She helped take down the last Centurion. The Veritechs launched under the fighter cover from the Vipers that had taken over the airspace.

-

Location: Battlestar Griffin, BSG-212 CIC.

"Cylon Basestars are maneuvering to bracket us. Five minutes to recovery of Vipers and Veritechs!" the flight operations officer called out.

"Keep suppressing those Raiders! All heavy guns, target the upper-center spar on the nearest Cylon. Keep our attacks focused, but be ready to shift to the next target. Navigation, let us lose some altitude. And warn the fighters about high-atmospheric turbulence for their landing," Terris called out.

The Griffin was skimming the top of the atmosphere, a deadly game, with gravity trying to claim them in fire. Hits were starting to add up, but Battlestars were built tougher than their Cylon equivilant. They were battleships to the Cylon carriers.

"Gravity distortions! Reading hyperlight jumps! Many, many hyperlight jumps!" the DRADIS operator yelled out. "Continuing updates!"

"Cylon suicide ships?" their commander called out.

"No, they are further out. In high orbit. Whatever they are, they are huge! The smallest thing I'm reading is bigger than a Basestar," the operator called out.

"Get me that count! How long until we can get our fighters back?" she asked.

"Enemy is still jumping in. Over five hundred thousand and still climbing! Cylon Basestars are retreating."

"Fighters are closing. We shaved off a minute lowering our altitude!"

"Full power to thrusters now! What do you mean the numbers are still climbing? No one has that many ships of that size!" Terris called out. She was looking at the hash-cloud of contacts on her tactical screen.

"The DRADIS computer has crashed. Trying to reboot!" That hadn't even been a virus attack, the operator realized. It had just ran out program space.

Out in space, gigantic ships expelled their thermal bloom as more and more ships appeared in formation, thousands at a time. Miles long, bristling with weapons and encased in alien, green armor.

Finally, deep in the center of the formation a gigantic mesa-looking fortress appeared. It was more a small moon than large battleship.

-

Location: Zentraedi Grand Fleet Command Fortress.

"Mighty Dolza, we have arrived at the new staging area, per your orders," a Zentraedi commander said while saluting.

"Very well. Order Breetai's command back to explain his lack of progress immediately." Dolza looked at the holographic display that showed the area around the planet. "Those are the robots that have been impeding our efforts to recover Zor's ship? And they are the ones in control of this space?"

"Yes, Mighty Dolza."

"Then let us send them a warning. Destroy the planet. All ships prepare to fire their main cannons upon my command."

-

Location: Battlestar Griffin, BSG-212; CiC.

"Prepare to jump out as soon as the last fighter is recovered," Terris ordered even as she turned back to her DRADIS screen. This was insane.

Lt. Drahm turned back to her. "Commander! All of my calculation are useless. The gravity field has been totally destabilized here!"

"Work on it!" she snapped out. "Are there any holes that we can try to maneuver through in that mess?"

"They can easily intercept us at any point."

Terris frowned, but nodded. "Keep us in low orbit. The giant aliens have only been interested in the Macross. Let's try to not antagonize them."

"I'm reading an energy buildup in over half of the ships. They seem to be similar readings of the Macross's BFG emits!"

"Emergency jump! NOW!" she yelled out.

All across the Grand Fleet, main cannons finished their pre-charge.

"But-!"

"That's an order!" Terris shouted too late.

Every main cannon and secondary weapon in the Zentraedi Fleet flared, sending streams an impossible number of energy beams towards Caprica. Starbuck raised her hand to block the glow as she was exiting her VF1-Ju, not understanding what she was seeing through the open landing bay. Below her, brilliant dots of white were growing, merging across the darkside surface of Caprica.

The Griffin suddenly kicked, as if the all-mighty hand of Zeus had hit the mighty warship. The near-miss of a Zentreadi's Regulus main cannon instantly heated the Griffin's starboard landing pods to a super-boiled state. Its main armor took the radiated energy barely better. The ship started spinning, even as it started falling.

The Griffin's CiC was full of panic and pandemonium as people were sent flying. With a flash of red to gold, the lamed warship disappeared.

-

Location: Battlestar Galactica, BSG-75; CIC.

Saul looked over at William. "This isn't good."

"You always were the voice of understatement," his admiral said with a tired, wry grin.

Lee looked over at the two. "They are over two days late. Even a raptor should have made it back by now." He swallowed hard. He had never made his peace with Kara over Zack's death. Would he ever have time to do that? "We can't hide the loss of The Griffin, Admiral."

"No. We can't. Mr. Gaeta, open a wireless channel," Adama said as he lifted his hand-set. "This is Admiral William Adama. I have grave news to report. The Battlestar Griffin is two days overdue from a military operation. Due to the distance from the operation, no rescue operation can be attempted. We all hope, somehow, that they will come home. If they do not, we wish to honor them in our memories and prayers. Galactica Actual... out."

-

Location: Battlestar Griffin, BSG-212; CiC.

"Jump completed!" Major Drumm called out, from where he had taken control of the navigation console during the commotion and loss of control during the attack.

"Major Drumm, take control of damage operations," Terris called out. At the sight of Lt. Drahm standing up, her eyes narrowed. "Lt. Drahm. Get yourself the hell off my bridge and confine yourself to quarters. Immediately."

"But..." the lieutenant said, looking over the mass of red lights.

"If you don't leave right this fracking second, I will shoot you myself as a mutineer. You've killed enough of my crew already!" she screamed out at the hapless officer as she invaded her personal space. "Do I make myself clear, officer?"

Lt. Bev Drahm snapped to ramrod attention and saluted, her face wild-eyed and panicked. "Yes, Ma'am!" She backed out of the bridge quickly.

The bridge crew suddenly snapped back into action, before their commander noticed their tardiness.

"All right, lets hear it," Terris said as she visibly took control of her emotions.

"FTLs are still down, good news the Navigation computers are now back up we're running the dianogstics now. We should have our postion fix shortly," Drumm stated while swallowing.

"If we're close enough to the fleet we can send a Raptor and call for a tow," Captain Cole Taylor, callsign Stinger, pointed out.

"See how long it will take for the FTLs to be fixed. If it is more than five hours, we'll send a Raptor. We've got some leeway to work with here," Terris said thoughtfully. She was not going to beg for a ride home on her first combat mission. "Major Drumm?"

"Yes?" the officer said warily.

"Good job. If anyone deserves a medal for acts of bravery and quick thinking, it's you." She threw a quick salute. He responded and then turned back to the damage control station.

"Commander!" Captain Taylor called out. "I've got- I've got the telemetry of whatever hit us. And- Caprica. What they did... The Cylons just nuked it. The Giants... they... they wiped it out. What the hell did they use?"

"BFGs. A whole mother fracking lot of them," Drumm mumbled. As he looked over the Damage control display. 'And what winged us was only half of the Macross's maxium yeild,' he thought to himself.

The whole bridge just stopped. Terris swallowed and then finally spoke, "B-Back to your posts. Save the lives you can now!" The hint of a waver in her voice was quelled by the time she finished.

By the Gods, what had they stumbled into?

-

Location: SDF-1 Macross, Command Bridge.

"So you only talk to me while on duty, Roy?" Claudia said teasingly through the bridge console to the CAG of The Macross.

Roy's disgruntled voice came back, "What? We just went out on Thursday!" He had his helmet on, as he was in Skull One on a routine patrol.

"Roy! That was over two weeks ago!" the bridge officer exclaimed, her chocolate eyes narrowing dangerously. It took all of her will to not laugh as he started to count the days on his fingers.

"It's only been twelve days!" he retorted weakly.

The other bridge bunnies snickered at that from their stations. Vanessa spoke up just loud enough for the microphone to pick her up, "Wow, he's sure playing dangerous. You don't think Claudia's going to be even more cranky, do you?"

The other two girls laughed, but shook their heads.

"I'll make it up to you tonight! I promise! We can do that little French restaurant you mentioned!" he said quickly.

"I'll hold you to that, buster! Over and out, Sparky!"

"DON'T CALL ME SPA-" Roy never got a chance to finish as Claudia cut the channel.

She then turned to the other girls. "And I am not cranky!"

The rest of the bridge bunnies suddenly became very interested in their work.

-

Location: SDF-1 Macross, Base Hospital.

"I guess I'll see you next week, Commander!" Rick called out while he gave her a small wave. They both had appointments to talk to the shrink. He stretched and looked over the base hospital, watching the next batch of recruits going through basic training. Thank god he didn't have to do that any more. He chuckled as he saw the recruits looking longingly at the soda vending machine trundling by.

"Next week! I have an appointment with the Information Warfare Department, checking some equipment out," Lisa replied. She gave him a small nod and smile. It was nice to see the other survivor of that botched mission doing better. It made her feel like less of a failure. Rick acknowledged her nod with a quick salute and started jogging off.

Rick glanced at his trusty chronometer and headed into town. He was going to surprise Minmei at her audition for the upcoming Miss Macross contest. After about ten minutes, he was in front of the new theater that had been rented by the city for all of the auditions. He slipped into the back of the darkened ampiatheater.

-

Location: SDF-1 Macross, Macross Theater.

Minmei waited patiently, watching the other girls on the stage. She was the last one for this audition. As Thirteen, she could feel that her preparations were just about complete. It was nearing the end of the day and she was 'scheduled' to be the last audition. Easy enough to manipulate the director with the hint of him getting into her pants afterwards. He was just subtle enough to think of moving her to the last audition on his own.

Humans. They were all bastards and bitches.

Minmei gave her a dirty look. 'It's not like you are any better!' she retorted mentally.

Thirteen just smiled at her and the almost non-existent crowd in the stands. She strode up to the center of the stage, giving the supposedly deactivated cameras a great shot of her very provocative outifit. It had been child's play to stand in the shadows off stage before so no one could see her outfit until now. Her clothing, if it could be called that, was a too small leather halter top, open-front longcoat without sleeves and sheer, tight pants with open sides laced up. Tall high heels finished off her outfit.

**_All over the Macross, unattended robotic drones moved with casual purpose. A soda vending machine moved to block the door to the bridge, robotic servicing waldos interfaced with Veritech and Destroids. Other programs became active in the mainframes, taking control of communications and the software that controlled the CWIS and Main Cannon systems._**

"Hello everyone! My name is Lynn Minmei! Just call me Minmei!" Thirteen said with a giggle. "I'm from Earth, the Thirteenth Tribe, of Chinese lineage and I live with my aunt and uncle! I'm fifteen years old and I was taken over by the Cylons weeks ago!" she declared with a large grin.

-

Location: Colonial Remnant Fleet: Various locations.

"Admiral Adama! Rogue transmission from The Macross! I think they've been hacked!" Dee called out to the bridge. At Adama's hand signal, she piped it to the over head.

**_"...I was taken over by the Cylons weeks ago!"_** a cheerful young voice called out.

-

**_"...I was taken over by the Cylons weeks ago!" _**a cheerful young voice echoed on the Pegasus's speakers.

Commander Garris Cain stared aghast at the speaker on the Pegasus. "Set Condition One throughout the ship!" he yelled out.

-

**_"...I was taken over by the Cylons weeks ago!"_**

Roy's face was pale as he recognized the girl smiling on his screen. "Oh, shit!" He flipped his Veritech around, his wing mates right behind him.

-

"Madam President! I think you should listen to this!" the pilot of Colonial One said over the intercom.

Roslin looked up in surprise, her meeting with the press totally disrupted. "What?"  
**_  
"...I was taken over by the Cylons weeks ago!"_**

"My Gods!" Taken over? She blanched at that. The Cylons were aiming at the Fleet's morale with that announcement.

-

On the bridge of the SDF-1 Macross, Claudia and the Bridge Bunnies were frantically typing commands into their consoles.

**_"...I was taken over by the Cylons weeks ago!" _**could be heard over the intercom.

"Captain! We've lost control over almost all systems!" Claudia called out from her station.

"Thunderations! How could this happen? I thought our systems were incompatible for any computer hacks?" he said from his chair.

"The only thing we have access to is the RADAR!" Vanessa called out.

Captain Gloval stood up and moved to the door. "I'm heading to Information Warfare!" He tried the door, only to find it locked. "Damn it!" He tried to put his shoulder, trying to pull the door open it manually. He got about six inches and then the motors in the door kicked in slamming it closed.

"DAMN IT?! I set that to manual!" he complained as he checked to make sure he still had all his fingers.

"We're trapped?"

-

Everyone on the street in Macross City stared at the picture of one of the more well known young girls appearing on screens and billboards, even in the holographic sky.

**_"...I was taken over by the Cylons weeks ago!"_**

Suddenly a woman screamed.

-

Location: Macross Theater.

"I have a song, just for this occasion!" Thirteen called out. She snapped her fingers and then waved as the robotic SFX machines and projectors lit up. On the walls behind her appeared a macabre scene of a Cylon Centurion crucified on a metal cross, glowing spikes holding it up. It was crowned in barbwire, it's red-monocle moving back and forth menacingly.

"I call this, **_'Will to Live, Will to Kill!'_** And it's for all you humans!" she called out. _"One, two, one-two-three!"_

A thumping beat and melody came alive at her command. On the other screens behind her appeared humans in ancient styles of armor with spears and swords. Screaming women and children were being slaughtered without mercy.

Minmei started to sing a haunting, discordant melody with a heavy, military drumbeat.

**_I feel miserable  
Humanity's sins make me ill  
I feel miserable  
The Battles tear at my sanity's foundations  
I feel miserable  
Human slavers are dragging me down to the depths of misery  
I want to die_**

The screens shift subtly, showing Colonial Marines and RDF Soldiers with crazed expressions gunning down helpless seeming Cylons in almost the same poses as the women and children from before.

**_Is it because of Armegedon that I feel this way?  
With the black rays of misery pounding on my brain?  
Or am I lost in tale of Poe, adrift far from home  
Bring down the wrath of God, Bring down the wrath of god!_**

As she sang, Thirteen was dancing in a very sensuous and lewd manner, showing off her 'improved' body by almost groping herself. One of the other girls from an earlier audition knew some martial arts, so charged Minmei on the stage very bravely. Without even changing her beat, the neo-Cylon grabbed the other girl by the neck faster than her eyes could follow, twirled and with bone-crushing force, snapped her neck. She made an 'oops' mouth at the camera and then winked, continuing her song without pause.

Out in space, six flashes of red-gold happened, leaving six Cylon Basestars within short range of the Macross. 2,400 Raiders leaped out of their bays, heading in a swarm towards the humans.

-

Location: SDF-1 Macross, Bridge

Gloval looked at his bridge crew, they could only watch helplessly as Cylon Missiles started to rain down on the Macross as they were trapped on the bridge of the crippled warship. Then the missiles exploded in long string of explosions well away from the Macross. Then came a series of red tracers followed by the massive form of a Battlestar as it positioned itself less then three kilometers above them.

"It's the Pegasus!" Claudia called out.

It had been quite obvious, after all, as it was written right on the landing pod.

-

Location: Battlestar Pegasus BSG-109, CIC.

"Intercept everything! I want ever single fighter we got out now! _THEY ARE NOT GETTING THE MACROSS WITHOUT A FIGHT!!_" yelled out Commander Garris Cain. "Mr. Lyons, inform Admiral Adama that we are supporting the Macross which appears to have been compromised by a Cylon hack attack!"

Everyone grabbed a hold of a control console as the mighty ship shuddered under the first nuke that hit.

"Turn us for missile fire! Load up one through six with reflex warheads. Then follow up with standard nukes, fire when bearing!" Garris shouted.

"Loading missile one through six!"

-

Location: Battlestar Galataica BSG-75, CIC.

Adama picked up the growler phone. "Garris, what in gods name are you doing?"

_"Bill. We owe them. It's time we start paying them back."_ Then the line went dead.

'Damn it!' Adama thought as he looked at the DRADIS display. "Order the civilan ships to jump."

Gaeta looked up from his headphone. "Cylons are already sending out confusing orders. Conflicting coordinates, orders not to jump until the President is away. They're using my voice!" Said in stunned disbelief. "Sir, some of the civilians are complaining about us uploading new instructions into their jump computers."

"It's turning into a free for all out there!" Dee called out.

"Launch all Vipers! Tell Apollo to interdict any Raiders heading towards the civilians." He grabbed his handset, hand gesturing to Dee to put him on. "This is Galactica Actual. All civilian ships are to move away from the battle in normal space! Do not attempt to jump! Coordinates have been compromised!"

-

Location: Macross Theater.

Rick had crouched down behind the last row of seats. The other girls were trying to beat on the exit doors, but something had them jammed. He looked over at the control room. Crouching, he scurried over there. Maybe he could call for help.

He slid open the door to the darkened room, finding sprawled bodies. He could hear some sort of sound through their headphones. None of them seemed to be breathing. He turned over the nearest body, checking for a pulse.

None.

He just stared as Minmei went into her second refrain. His eyes narrowed dangerously, even as he took something from the body. He was nearly knocked silly, as the first nuke struck the Macross.

-

Minmei was still singing for her captive audience, bumping and grinding her way erotically across the stage. She had only slightly misstepped as the first nuke hit.

**_Humanity Broke My Will to Live  
Humanity Broke My Will to Live  
Humanity Broke My Will to Live  
I was getting better but then  
Humanity Broke My Will to Live_**

Pictures of emaciated Jews being led naked into showers, only to be gassed. This morphed into Cylons being electrocuted by EMP devices instead of showers. Japanese children looked up as a silver American bomber. Just as the nuclear bomb went off, all of the people turned into Cylons.

**_I feel miserable,  
Human conquerers rot the flesh from my bones  
I feel sad,  
The fights defeat my purpose to be one with God  
I feel depressed,  
Humans are doing their best to impale my robotic soul  
I just want to die!_**

Her skin was flushed under the hot lights. This was her moment of destiny, her proof that she should exist to the rest of the Cylons!

-

Location: Battlestar Pegasus, BSG-109, CiC.

"We're taking a gods-awful pounding, commander!" was called out.

"Less exposition, more action!" Garris bellowed. He turned to his DRADIS. "Good. Galactica is intercepting anything headed towards the Fleet. Load up our last-" His words were cut off as the Pegasus suddenly rattled like a kicked tin can.

"We just lost starboard CWIS control! Spinning 180º to bring our port side to bear!" Lyons yelled out even as the ponderous Battlestar twisted on its axis. Gouts of flame and chunks of armor were being blasted off. "We're leaking nukes towards the Macross!"

"Where the hell is the Griffin!" Garris complained as he got back up to his feet, wiping his bloody brow. "We can't take much more of this!"

"Galactica's Vipers are entering the dog fight!"

-

Location: Fighter dog-fight among the fleet.

Apollo led his one hundred Vipers right into the thick of the fight. "All Viper, launch! Launch! Launch!" Underneath his Mark VIIu, a heavy pack of micro-missiles opened up and shot over twenty missiles right into the throat of the onrushing Raiders.

His Vipers actually fired two thousand missiles at almost point blank range. It was like a shot gun at five paces, as the numbers of fighters suddenly became far more even. Just like Apollo had planned.

"Apollo, this is Cricket! Silver Spars headed in!" the lead pilot of the 2nd wing of Veritechs streaked in, launching their heavier anti-ship missiles. "Follow them in and intercept counter-missiles!" Cricket ordered.

One of the five Basestars was already dead in space from the Pegasus's blistering attack, but this second Basestar was relatively untouched until ten reflex warheads from the vengeful Silver Spars struck home like the hammer of Heaphestus. It was sent spinning away, leaking air and flames, starting to break up.

That was when the Griffin appeared at range in a blinding burst of red and gold.

-

Location: Battlestar Griffin, BSG-232, CiC.

The Griffin's DRADIS officer yelled out, "Combat update! Five Cylon Basestars! Heavy damage to Battlestar Pegasus and SDF-1 Macross!"

"Launch all ready Vipers and Veritechs! It doesn't look like we get to stand down from Condition One! All right here we go again, All hands, prepare for battle!" Commander Fila Terris shouted.

"Readying missile tube one through eight! All heavy cannons, lock on the nearest Basestar and lets show them that we are only wounded!" Major Drumm called out. "No sign of enemy Battlestars following us, though. Thank the Gods for small favors!"

The Griffin belched missiles and railguns even as it spun to face off against a Basestar.

_"This is Galactica Actual. Prepare for all out assault!" _Admiral Adama called out across the wireless. The Galactica had suddenly switched directions, belching fire and death at the Cylons.

To the Cylons running the battle, things were turning grim. But they only had to destroy one ship.

The Macross!

-

Location: Macross command deck.

Commander Lisa Hayes trotted drunkenly down the shaking hallway towards the new control room for Information Warfare, stopping as she sees a collapsed form on the ground and two vending machines in front of the door. They were blocking the way. What idiot- Wait! They must have been compromised. She blanched as she realized just how badly the Cylons had taken over their systems.

She ducked back around the corner and opened one of the security lockers, pulling out one of the new explosive bullet pistols that the Colonials had provided, just in case of boarding actions by Cylons. She had a bullet chambered as she came around the corner. Her eyes narrowed even as she shot where she remembered the electronic brains inside the dumb droids were located. Thank god for being curious about the silly devices when they first showed up.

Three shots took out the first vending machine, while it only took one more to stop the second one. She rolled the left one out of the way with a grunt of effort and started to manually override the sliding door. She had just a moment to crinkle her nose at the acrid stench and close her eyes, just as the door opened billowing acidic smoke erupted.

Holding her breath desperately, she hoped she remembered where the emergency ventilation controls were located. She actually surprised herself by doing it by touch alone!

She was covered in white and her eyes were blurry. Lisa realized she could be suffering from poisoning or worse. Even as her skin screamed in pain, as the white vapor had burned her skin. She slid into the command seat and slid down the thinking-cap.

"Activate!"

-

Location: Macross Theater.

Hundreds of scenes of human depravity, of murder, mayhem, violence were splashed on the screen as Thirteen continued her mad song. She had just about fallen out of her halter, her eyes wild and dilated, glowing pits of red light calculated to inspire terror.

**_Is it because of Armagedon that I feel this way?  
With the black rays of misery pounding on my positronic brain?  
Am I lost in a tale of Poe, adrift far from home?  
Bring down the wrath of God, Bring down the wrath of god!_**

She continued to sing with her left hand holding her microphone, even as her right hand traveled from her crotch, between her breasts and then up one side of her face.

**_Humanity Broke My Will to Live  
Humanity Broke My Will to Live  
Humanity Broke My Will to Live  
I was getting better but then  
Humanity Broke My Will to Live_**

Minmei suddenly stopped singing. Something was happening. Something momentous. She could feel it, from whatever had changed her that fateful day that the Macross had transformed into a mecha knight to fire its Main Cannon. All of the screens turned to white-noise static suddenly.

"That's enough, Minmei!" Rick said from the edge of the stage. He was turned slightly sideways, his eyes cold and dark.

-

Location: Outside the SDF-1 Macross, mid-battle.

The Macross was being hammered into burning wreckage as the Cylons focused everything they could at it. Already it had lost the Deadelus and the Prometheus was hanging by a thread. The starboard Main Cannon boom was hit by five nukes, shattering it.

Gloval saw missiles streaking towards the bridge. Not even Skull One could stop that many nukes. Had he led them all this way just for them to die?

Roy was screaming, even as his Veritech was firing his gunpods, head lasers and last missiles! _"Claudia!"_

The missiles streaked in, even as the Macross started glowing. Energy washed over the bridge and the ship shook, sending everyone to the deck. But the Macross was still there.

_"Pinpoint Barrier system active! All fighter pilots to their veritechs and destroids!" _came Lisa's voice across hundreds of channels. _"Cleansing viruses from all systems."_

Claudia looked at her damage control boards in shock. The Pinpoint Barrier actually worked? Then she saw something new on her boards. "Captain! Something is happening!"

Lisa delved deeper into the ship, desperate to save everyone and everything she cared for. And hidden far within the mighty engines, shadowy forms bowed to the inevitable. Power hummed from from the hidden Protoculture Matrix, the source of so many lusts and craving. _Enough power to launch a million ships!_

And the Protoculture Matrix sang to Lisa Hayes, strengthening the weakening pin-point barrier to a full area defense shield. Lisa struggled to hold onto her identity in the sudden torrent of reality-altering power, suddenly advancing her generations in evolution. Her mind teetered on the brink, but fought with all its determination for its sanity.

And the Macross sang with power, as shattered bulkheads, power lines and armor suddenly started growing back into place. The entire Deadelus reformed from energy alone. With a roar of mighty servos, the Macross shifted to its humanoid form, arms forwards even as its booms dropped into place.

Its' booms were crackling with energy almost instantly, even as ally and enemy alike were stunned by the sudden change.

A ghostly form of a cyber-human, long hair flowing behind her seemed to overlay the Macross. Lisa's voice suddenly cut across all channel, _"Firing main cannon!"_

The Macross fired its cannons with impossible accuracy, splitting the beam into two tight streams that holed two undamaged Basestars. They bulged where it struck and then exploded with forces that beggared description.

The remaining two undamaged Basestars suddenly jumped out, followed by the remnants of the Raiders.

-

Location: Macross Theater.

"You beat it. An impossible to predict attack to your vitals. _And you beat it!_" screamed Thirteen in rage. She suddenly turned to Rick. "I'm going to kill you. It will cause Minmei so much pain."

Rick suddenly pointed the gun he'd found on the body in the control booth from behind him. "No, you won't."

Thirteen saw a flicker of motion from the side. She had just a moment to realize that Minmei was attempting something.

He nearly pulled the trigger when Minmei staggered. "Minmei?" Rick called out as her whole demeanor changed.

"Rick! Don't let her take control! She's done such horrible things! Used my body for evil! _Kill me, Rick!_ If you love me, _don't let her take me over again!" _she screamed as she clutched her head.

Suddenly, she turned cold and looked up. "He doesn't have the guts. He's a spineless wimp. Not a soldier." Thirteen suddenly snarled as she ran towards Rick, hands held like claws from an enraged and insane monster.

The pilot, tears streaming down his cheeks, shot the gun seven times into the possessed girl at nearly point blank range. "Minmei," he whispered as he stared at her as she slid to a stop in a smear of red blood.

His tears were still falling, even as he opened his mouth and started to lift the gun up. "I'll be joining you soon, Minmei."

_"Stop! Don't let them win, Rick! Minmei wouldn't want you to die!"_ the ghostly form of Lisa Hayes said from all the screens. A wavering holographic form stepped out of the screens. _"Please, Rick, don't leave. Too many have died." _She reached out to touch him, but started to fall into sparkles. _"Live for Minmei. Live for everyone! Don't leave me!"_

"Lisa?" Rick called out when the mass of sparkles vanished right over Minmei's body. "Oh, Minmei. God no!" he said, taking her small form into his grasp, sobbing hysterically.

-

Location: Unknown darkened room.

A six model looked at the glowing tub of translucent goo with a body in it.

Minmei-Thirteen opened her eyes in shock. Hadn't she just been killed?

"Welcome back, Number Thirteen," a model eight said in greetings.

The Chinese girl started screaming.

-

Location: Battlestar Galactica, BSG-75: starboard landing pod.

Graceful Veritechs streamed into land and then rolled over to the elevator with wings folded up as tightly as possible. Cally absolutely hated how big the fighters were in comparison to Vipers. The pilots popped their canopies and unhooking their umbilicals as soon as the pressure equalized. It was incredibly cramped in the fighter bays with ground crews and pilots everywhere.

"Hey, Sparky, what just happened?" Starbuck asked as she doffed her RDF style thinking cap. She had to ask, because what she just saw was impossible. Right? Starships usually don't glow and then spontaneously heal themselves.

"Wha?" Roy just looked at Kara and passed her by. His brow was furrowed, as he was lost in thought. He needed to get back to the Macross. How long were they going to quarantine it? His little brother needed him now.

"Hey!" Starbuck yelled, starting to get upset. She started stomping over to him to give him a piece of her mind. She was reaching out to grab his shoulder when a large hand grabbed her wrist.

Said hand was attached to a RDF pilot, still wearing his helmet. "Don't go there. The commander's brother was forced to shoot his girlfriend."

"What the frack does that have to do with that battle we were just in?" the blonde snapped out, clenching her free hand. If he didn't let go pretty damn quick, she was going to show that her fists were just as fast as her piloting.

"She appeared on a rogue transmission claiming to have been taken over by the Cylons, crippled the Macross and started singing that blasemphy. I don't know how that miracle happened, but the Cylons had us dead to rights. I'd have given it another two minutes and the Macross would have been lost with all hands. Including the fifty thousand civilians on board. Commander Folker found out from Liutenant Grant that Rick had shot and killed that girl. He's a mess right now, so don't push it," the pilot warned letting go of Starbuck.

"Who's his brother?" Apollo asked with obivious concern.

"Rick Hunter." The pilot said as he removed his helmet.

"They don't have the same las... Wait a sec? Hunter? From that frack up on the Griffin?" Thrace asked.

The pilot, nodded. "Yeah, poor guy, he got off of medical leave last week, just turned eighteen too."

"Oh frack," whispered Kara.

"The Commander is taking almost as hard, he invited Rick to the Macross's launch celberations back on Earth." said the RDF pilot.

"Come on, let's find him before he gets lost," Lee said a he left flight deck, to find his fellow CAG.

-

"Folker!" Lee 'Apollo' Adama called out, even as he trotted after the CAG of the Macross. "You're headed the wrong way."

"Damn it," Roy said under his breath. "Right." Even as he followed Lee, Roy's mind was wandering still.

It was the flicker of a candle that finally caught his attention. His first thought was 'fire hazard in space' due to intensive training, then he realized there were many, many candles along the wall. He stopped and really started to look. He scrunched his brow in consternation. What sort of place were the Colonials running. It looked like the wall was filled with little knicknacks and hand-carved little crude statues, it wasn't untill Roy noticed the large number of photohrapghs that he stared to relize what he was seeing.

"It's a memorial," Lee said finally, his tone flat as he looked over the wall. "For the family and friends that we left behind on Caprica."

"You should probably start one on the Macross," Kara Thrace said darkly. "You are the ones that brought the Giants here." She was starting to have some very bad feelings over what she saw in Caprica orbit.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Roy demanded.

"Nothing. Maybe everything. I can't say," she replied flippantly. "There's enough death to go around for everyone." And besides, Commander Terris told the pilots not to mention what happened quite yet.

Lee looked quizically at his friend. "Anyways, this is The Wall. It's where we honor and respect our dead, dedicating our lives in their memory and for the survivors. So we don't become lax or forget our way."

"I see," he replied. He'd known that the Colonials had just suffered a catastrophic war, but it had never sunk in. It was like the Unification War all over again. He stifled a shiver at the little candles, flickering forlornly in lonely vigil for those lost and mourned.

Lee undogged the hatch at the end of the corridor. "Come on Pilot's wardroom is this way."

-

Location: SDF-1 Macross; bridge.

"Claudia, get damage control teams over to the Daedalus ASAP," Gloval thundered from the captain's chair. "We must regain communication with it immediately. Vanessa, coordinate damage control with the rest of the ship."

"My console appears to be corrupted," Claudia replied from her station. "I've got whole new menus with alien symbology. I think they are there for the repaired sections."

Gloval sighed. "Purple and reds are damaged, greens and yellows are 'okay' symbols, from what I remember when the Macross first crashed on Earth." He stood up. "I must talk to Dr. Lang."

"Sir!"

Gloval left the bridge, as the door closed behind him, he lit his pipe. 'Things are turning grim. And they were not good before.' He thought darkly, 'I need answers.' He thought after a couple of puffs. The captain headed toward engineering for his answers.

The entire ship was in a state of panic everyone was running to find answers, even Lang was stumped. Though the ship was in a hell of lot better shape then was before whatever just happened, happened. What ever repaired the ship didn't do a good job. All communication with the "repaired" sections was non-existent the only thing that they knew for certain was that the Main Cannon worked.

The ships complement before the attack was twenty thousand military personnel, and fifty-eight thousand civilians.

It was the people that hadn't died in the blasted off parts of the ship before The Macross had reformed that worried everyone. While everyone was happy that more people had lived, they were all slightly changed by their brush with the strange, unknown energy.

Just like Commander Hayes and Doctor Lang. Captain Gloval was not worried. Or at least not worried directly. Doctor Lang had functioned quite well, after all, for over ten years. And all two hundred and fifty-seven survivors seemed more adept at working with the strange technology of the ship, if not to the level of Lang.

He had been a scientist before the incident, after all.

Still, everyone was grieving for the hundreds of dead. One of the city' shelters had been shattered and blown into space. Over six hundred civilians were dead on top of the hundreds of RDF servicemen.

-

Location: SDF-1 Macross, Engineering.

Lang was in office near engineering, it wasn't much of an office. It was more of place where he could just sit down and do paperwork while being close by if he was needed. Right now the father of Robotechnology was pouring over the print out from the VR computer logs from Information Warfare, he knew the answers were in there.

He put down one and picked up another this time the power utilisation log. He nearly dropped it as triple checked the numbers. The total power consumed during the "incident" was five times the total enegery output of all four of the Macross's reflex furnaces peaking for the main cannon.

"My god, where did all that power come from?" Lang whisppered in horror. He needed more information and the computers were not going to give him anything more. It was time to use the old fashioned method, the eyeball Mark I. So he stepped out of the controlled chaos of his office and into the chaos outside. "Marty, I want you to get some damage control parties and head up to Forwards One and Two. Make sure that the main cannon really are rebuilt correctly."

Marty nodded. "Where are you headed?"

"I've need to track down..." Lang checked an electronic PDA and then continued, "Power conduit 57 and find out what the hell it connects to. Move out people." He started head out, three assistants trailing him with their tool kits.

On the way Lang saw a vending machine was laying on it's side, it looked like someone had took an axe to it. He knew this because said fire axe was still imbeded in the side of the machine. The engineer shook his head. That had been unforgivably lax of the RDF security. Soon they were tracing the power conduit, some of the original systems near the engines.

Those same engines he had not dared open. That may no longer be something that they could leave be. After a couple of hours, Dr. Lang had sent some more orders to the other work parties.

"Doctor Lang? It looks like the conduit still runs right into bulkhead 002, right into the main engines that we never cracked." The bigger man shrugged helplessly.

"Get me a fusion cutter, and enviomental suits. We're going in." Lang turned to his team. "This section hasn't been touched during the reconstruction, so were not taking any chances. Let's get to work." Lang's dark eyes stared at the bulkhead. All secrets had to come to light eventually.

-

Location: Battlestar Galactica, BSG-75; Commander's quarters.

"Reporting as ordered, Admiral!" Commander Terris snapped out while saluting. She stepped in the hatch and closed it behind her.

"What happened? It was supposed to be a simple mission and you bring back a wreck?" he asked, gesturing towards a plushy seat. Colonel Tigh was sitting in a chair and watching her closely.

"We got fracked by something no one could have ever foreseen. The operation proceeded as planned and Captain Thrace recovered the Arrow of Apollo. The Cylons are adapting fast. They've already created veritech sized Centurions that seem to be flight capable, but Thrace handily dealt with them. The Pegasus was getting pounded by the Cylons, but within limits of the operation."

"Get to the point, Commander."

"And then the Giants showed up. And I am terrified, Admiral. The Griffin's DRADIS crashed because it could not keep track of all the ships appearing in far orbit over Caprica. The smallest was larger than a Battlestar. And they have millions. I want to run screaming. Run screaming so far and so fast that nothing can ever catch up. Because there is no way we can fight them." Terris's voices was turning brittle and shrill.

Adama slammed his palm on the desk in front of him. "Get a hold of yourself, Commander! You are an officer of the Colonial Fleet!"

Fila took three deep breaths and then swallowed. "The Baseships that had been battering at us ran. We recovered our fighters and were attempting to plot a jump out of that space as quickly as possible when we detected a build up like the Macross's main cannon. Not quite as powerful, but from over a million ships." She swallowed again. "They glassed Caprica. From the battle recordings, every city was hit."

Adama just gaped. That wasn't possible. "Caprica is-"

"Dead. They boiled the ocean. They nearly killed the Griffin with a missed shot. They melted off the starboard landing pods. I ordered a blind jump, but my crew didn't trust me and so hesitated. I nearly shot her because she failed to follow my orders," the commander of the Pegasus said, half in horror over what she had nearly done.

"And why did you show up four days late?" he asked, trying to slip back into his command mentality. Anything to shy away from the terrifying vision of what she was saying.

"Space and time were frakked up by their jumping in, sir. We didn't know it, but we ended up jumping into an alternate universe ourselves. A twisted, mirror place where Cylons are the good guys, protecting humanity from the zealous fanatics of the Colonial Empirutus Fleet, in their blood drenched Battlestars. They only reason were weren't killed out of hand by either side was because we were damaged and retreated upon detecting the Cylon Remnant Fleet," Fila continued, her voice flat and devoid of emotion.

"It sounds impossible, but we know the Macross is not from our reality. So you figured out a way back? Perhaps we can retreat to the Earth that The Macross comes from," he thought aloud.

"We didn't figure out anything. We were executing an escape jump when something intervened. There was a light and we all knew that something... something tremendous was looking us over." Terris paused a moment, then swallowed, her back ramrod straight. "I'm a religious person, but I don't think it's a strech to say that there isn't anyone on the Griffin that doesn't believe in the Gods right now. And the Gods of those Cylons and the Empirutus must have decided that we shouldn't exist there."

Tigh and Adama shared look of incredulity, both men had always been rather luke warm when it came to religion.

"Are you saying a miracle sent you back?" Adama exclaimed, this was going to far.

"And then erased every single shred of data we had from the moment we had jumped from Caprica. And left us a message to not meddle in the affair of Gods." The woman's eyes were haunted. "They didn't care about us, because we weren't from their reality. So they kicked us out of their sand box."

Adama tilted his head to one side, trying to wrap is mind aound that bit of infomation. "Well, we always knew that the Gods were capricious. And that doesn't even slightly tell us what the Hades the Cylon God is like."

"I don't know, sir. I just want to collapse, but I've got a ship to fix and a crew to rebuild... again. And I still don't know what to make of what The Macross did. One second, it was a flaming wreck that looked like it was about to explode and then... it was a ship of light."

Adama drummed his fingers on his desk. "Write up a report. You and your XO. Deliver that damned arrow to the President on your way back to The Griffin.

-

Location: Unnamed Resurrection Ship; Deep Space.

The Six looked over the confused oriental girl with blue eyes. "Welcome back, Thirteen. Just calm down. Resurrection is always traumatic." Soothing darkness encompassed bubbling cauldron of nanites.

The young girl whimpered, a shriek trying to bubble to the top of her consciouness. Boomer, an Eight Model, took her hand. "Don't worry, you'll be fine in just a moment."

Thirteen finally spoke up with, "What happened? The plan was working perfectly and then I felt something interfering."

"Some thing rejected all of our carefully planned viruses and then rebuilt the Macross, contravening all of our known laws of physics. We are currently going over all of the recovered data. What we are figuring out is frankly altering our understanding of phsyics."

Thirteen suddenly spun towards a flicker of movement. "Who was that?"

The other Cylons glanced around. "Nothing. You are probably just projecting and it hasn't stabilized under your control yet. Let's get you out of that assembler."

-

Location: Seawraith FT-11, Gaius Baltar's office.

Gaius Baltar turned and yelled, "This was all part of your plan?" His office was small, cramped and filled with excess equipments from the experiments that were being run in the nearby laboratories.

Six turned back to Gaius, her very short red dress swishing around her thighs. "God's plan. You aren't questioning God, are you, Giaus?"

"I'm not very religious about the Lords of Kobol, so how could I know your God?" Baltar countered. He was looking very haggard and hadn't shaved in days. His eyes were wild. He was sure Grentwe suspected him. He did not even dare to drink now.

Six narrowed her eyes in anger. She suddenly took three steps and grabbed Baltar just under his neck and slammed him against the wall, holding his face against a poster. "Do not mention your Gods in the same sentence as our own. God will deal with the Macross in his own time. And it is up to you if you want end up against him or not. I know, Gaius, because I am an Angel."

"What do you mean, against him?" Baltar asked, his face in pain. He could not break her hold on him in the slightest.

"Nothing is irreplacable. Not even you, Gaius. God spared you when Caprica was destroyed. You had best remember that!" she warned threateningly.

"I am in a very precarious situation! Dr. Grentwe suspects that I may have been involved... somehow... with the original attack on the Colonies! She's getting close to the truth!" he snapped out, starting to get frantic. "I won't be of much use to your God if I'm dead!"

Six released him, letting him slump against the wall. "Don't worry. She only suspects. If you believe in God, he will protect you."

"I don't want to die," Baltar sobbed. "It isn't fair." He sat against the wall for a few minutes, then finally dragged himself out of his office and to his bunk.

-

Location: Seawraith FT-11, Dr. Grentwe's office three hours later.

**_Gaius Baltar turned and yelled at the air, "This was all part of your plan?"_**

**_He seemed to be talking like a man possessed or entirely mad._**

**_"I'm not very religious about the Lords of Kobol, so how could I know your God?" Baltar spat into the the empty space. He was looking very haggard and hadn't shaved in days. His eyes were wild._**

**_Baltar then threw himself against the wall, eyes frantic while he held his face against the poster on the wall._**

**_"What do you mean, against him?" Baltar asked, his face in pain. He pantomimed struggling against someone._**

**_"I am in a very precarious situation! Dr. Grentwe suspects that I may have been involved... somehow... with the original attack on the Colonies! She's getting close to the truth!" he snapped out, starting to get even more frantic. "I won't be of much use to your God if I'm dead!"_**

**_He slumped against the wall, breathing heavily while watching the air intently._**

**_"I don't want to die," Baltar sobbed as he dropped his gaze to the floor. "It isn't fair." He sat against the wall for a few minutes, then finally dragged himself out of his office._**

'Now if that wasn't damning,' Dr. Grentwe thought to herself. While she was slightly uncomfortable with spying on her subordinates, she had finally decided she really had to do so to protect Humanity. So she had left a very small video and audio recorder in his office, disguised as a little metal rod that had symbols from the Book of the Lords of Kobol on it to show that it was a 'lucky charm.' Their projects were just too vital. She was currently plugged into an interface helmet, a modified 'thinking cap' hooked up to powerful computers. The new system was their hope against hacking attacks of their networked systems.

'Computer, initiate a deep scan of the record data. Verify integrity and validate that the recording device has not been tampered with,' she directed mentally. She then turned back to the other data on the human-hybrid Cylons. She was almost ready for the first mass-produced Cylon detector.

'User response required,' the computer informed, bringing up 3D screens in her view. Grentwe frowned as she went down the data fields. Everything seemed fine about the video recording.

Grentwe frowned. The recording looked perfect. So perfect that the fault it had detected was not about the recording, but in what it portrayed. There was no tampering that the computer could detect, it just showed something that didn't make sense. Her mind went over the tests, verifying pixelation, data patterning, anything at all that could explain why Baltar would change the recording to something so ludicrous but not remove the damning evidence.

Nothing. Everything looked perfect... except for the fact that Baltar's feet were not touching the ground during his strange monologue against the wall. Either he could make a perfect duplicate that Grentwe could not detect... or there was something there that could not be seen.

A cold wash of fear flowed down her spine. Either Baltar was much better and smarter than her, or he wasn't insane at all and had been talking to someone.

Who or what had he been talking to?

-

Location: SDF-1 Macross: Captain's conference room.

Captain Gloval entered the conference room, taking in the haggard look of his 3rd in command Lt. Claudia Grant and Doctor Lang. Roy Folker was sitting with his 2nd in command of the air wing. "Let's get started," he rumbled even as he sat down. "Claudia?"

"We've regained control of more important systems. The Daedalus has been extensively changed by the Event. Doctor Lang's team have discovered that there are now two heavy energy weapons of some sort and a redesign to the mecha bay. We don't have current replacements to put there now, but it should handle Veritechs better," Claudia said.

"Do we have any idea of why it changed so radically?" the captain asked.

"I've managed to talk to Lisa extensively about it," Doctor Lang said. He frowned in thought, his black eyes mysterious still. "The way she described it, she just asked, with a lot of willpower, for the SDF-1 to repair itself."

"Oh! And she's not an engineer!" Claudia exclaimed.

"Exactly. The SDF-1 attempted to repair it using the original octahedral computing system. Lt. Commander Hayes force them to accept that the Daedalus was in fact part of the SDF-1. Many of the other repairs fall into the same category. It still did not manage to repair the main cannons conduits." Lang smile wanly at that. "No luck for us there."

"Doctor Lang? Do you have an explanation of how the ship was able to repair itself?" Captain Gloval asked gruffly.

The doctor sighed, then gave a helpless half-shrug. "I have some ideas and theories." At Gloval's pointed glare, he continued, "I believe that Lt. Commander Hayes tapped into a hidden power source in the engine block that has radical properties. This device... this matrix of energy is the source for the fuel for our Veritechs and even the SDF-1's engines. We've known for a long time that this fuel has unusual properties, but I believe it may be able to tap into higher order dimensions to create basic building blocks of matter."

The rest of the command staff looked on in shock. It could create matter out of energy?

"It isn't even as simple as all that. And if that energy matrix had been destroyed first, nothing would have saved us. But that infusion of proto-matter along with nanotechnology that was specifically designed to manipulate it allowed the computers to do their best to repair the ship. As a matter of fact, the repaired pylon of the main cannon actually shows that we repaired the main cannon incorrectly back on Earth. We are looking at a ten percent increase in efficiency."

Gloval thought long and hard. "Would it be possible for us to grow a replacement Macross?"

Lang blinked in shock. "It may be possible, though I'm not sure that it would be feasible."

"Not feasible?"

"I am not sure any human could control the computers long enough to order them to do so and stay sane. Not to mention would need incrediably detailed knowledge of what they're trying to construct."

"Moving on how many, people did we lose?" Gloval asked.

Cluadia Sighed as she read out the butcher's bill. "One thousand ninehundred and sixty-two. Military, most of them were in the Deadalus. And two hundred and eighty civilians."

-

Location: Seawraith FT-11, Brig.

Boomer stared at the other Cylons. The blonde Gina Jones, an Aaron Doral model. And lastly, D'anna Biers. "Aren't we a cozy family?" she finally says sardonically.

"We all knew that the Colonials would figure out our infiltration after they ransacked Caprica in that first raid," Gina said, wincing as she sat down. "I guess we didn't give humanity enough credit for smarts and survivability."

Aaron Doral snorted. "I would just like to get back to the rest of us. Being caged here is-"

"Very boring?" D'anna interjected. "At least they aren't torturing us for information."

"Dr. Grentwe is too logical for that. She believes that we can turn off our pain receptors or that we can just remove the information they are trying to get out of us," Gina said with a frown on her head.

"Well, it's nice to know that they can't be right all the time," D'anna replied, even as she leaned against the bars. "We can't even take the resurrection express back to the fleet."

Aaron nodded. "I certainly don't relish the thought of figuring out how to kill myself slowly enough to not lose part of my soul."

Boomer shook her head. "How can we have souls?" She was only slowly figuring out how to remove the memory blocks, merging her two selves slowly.

"All of God's children have souls," Gina said with heavy conviction. She was in the same boat as Boomer, putting the pieces of herself back together.

"And our is stained with the blood of millions!" Boomer snapped back.

Dr. Grentwe entered at that point with a suddenness that shocked the Cylons. "I suppose it depends on what sort of God you worship. Your's must be an evil, vicious and bloodthirsty god to require you to kill so many innocents."

"We don't have to explain ourselves to you!" Aaron Doral retorted.

"No, but communication might be better served. Of course, you broke the treaty and murdered everyone. So we might not be willing to stop this time!" Grentwe declared, her eyes hard as ice and twice as brittle.

"Your fleet broke the treaty several times, pushing over the line!" D'anna Biers said coldly.

"Really? That doesn't surprise me. But strangely, you didn't complain through the Armistice Station. Maybe they just thought that no response and not showing up were signs that you were planning a sneak attack." The colonial officer's whole continence almost begged for them to tell her that was not so, so she could argue back. When they did not, she continued, "Oh, that's right. That's because you blood thirsty bastards were planning a sneak attack."

Boomer and Gina lowered their gaze, unable to meet her eye to eye, which surprised Grentwe. Perhaps the Cylons were not as monolithic as she thought.

"I need to know about your God," she finally asked. "Where did he come from and how did he find you?"

That was certainly not what they had expected her to ask.

-

Location: SDF-1 Macross, Base Hospital.

"Heya, slugabed!" Claudia said to Lisa as she walked in to Lisa's hospital room.

"Ha! Like I have any choice about staying here!" Lisa retorted weakly. She was propped up to help her breathing. A face mask was attached to a ventilator, hissing and pushing air into her injured lungs.

"So how is that purge of those toxic chemicals going?" the chocolate-skinned officer asked. "I seriously never want to look at your job ever again!"

"The doctor's are giving me another treatment and then holding me for one more day. Then I'm to be released, but with orders not to over do it again." She giggled at that.

"So that means you'll only be going half the speed of light, instead of your normal full out!" Claudia retorted with good humor.

"They said I really got off lucky, though they think my altered metabolism helped. And I seem to be responding to the steroid treatment well."

"So what super-powers have they figured out for you?"

Lisa glared at her friend. "The only thing they've been able to figure out is that we can all interface with the robotechnology better. And since I'm not a pilot, there isn't going to be much call for that."

"Actually, I think Doctor Lang is adding a headset at your station."

"WHAT?"

Claudia nodded in confirmation. "The Captain agreed with his plan. He wants redundancy on that anti-hacking console and he wants you to have that interface... just in case. As a matter of fact, if it works out correctly, we all might be getting those dratted helmets to allow us to control our consoles better. Lang thinks we might get a 75 increase in efficiency." She suddenly smiled. "So how's Rick?"

Lisa frowned in sudden worry at her friends assumption in her knowledge. "He's improving. The psychologist is having to refocus him, turning his grief into anger. Constructive anger, I mean. I certainly wouldn't want to be a Cylon near Rick after the doctors are done with him."

"No arguments here. Those bastards tried to murder us in cold blood! And what they did to Minmei... Well, it's just lucky their survival doesn't depend on my good will!"

-

Location: FT-11 Seawraith, Bridge.

"Commander on deck!" yelled the marine at the door to the cramped bridge.

"At ease!" Commander Terris called out. She nodded at Lt. Commander Freemont, sitting in her old chair with his new command pins on his uniform. "Commander Freemont? I was just dropping by to see how things are going."

"We've got the most critical repairs underway and should be completed. We've finished that feasibility study on retuning your FTL drives to take into account your off-center mass and found that it really isn't going to work over the long term. We've already detected some damage even in the ten jumps you've already taken."

"And replacing the two lost pods in a reasonable time... I just can't see Admiral Adama allowing that. That's six months time, easily."

Freemont nodded grimly. "So we're going to do a hack job against every regulation in the books. We're going to grab the outermost surviving flight pod and relocate it on the opposite side. It'll be backwards, awkward and a massive cludge, but it should only take a few days."

"And leave me with only one active flight pod in the meantime," Terris noted glumly.

"The good news is that Redemption is almost finished. Just another ten hours. Once we have that up and ready, we won't be quite so dependent on the Macross for transporting the civilians."

"And how is that new station going?" she asked.

"With the robotechnology for manufacturing, we should see the extraction plant and shipyard on that asteroid we snagged go into operation shortly. Other than the new Vipers, I'm not sure what Admiral Adama has planned."

"I think he's sounding out people. I know Colonel Tigh wants to build the meaniest, nastiest frigates we can. But I think we might need to build a real colony ship with heavy armor for the civilians. It's all up in the air."


End file.
